NEW YORK — Is there anything comparable to the numbing obstinacy, the utter blindness to reality, that politicians display toward the consequences of untrammeled gun ownership in this country? So I wondered, once again, when I stumbled upon President George W. Bush's answer to what some now call "the Virginia Tech Massacre" — the report that three of his agencies prepared on his orders.
Here are some facts. The number of those shot dead by a mentally unbalanced student in "the massacre" that April morning was 32. The figure was thought large enough, even in this country, that The Washington Post prepared a profile of each person killed and serialized the sketches. But anyone willing to pause and check would have found a startling fact: That number is close to the daily average for killings by firearms in the United States.
According to the U.S. government's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2004 — the latest year for which such figures are available — a total of 11,624 people were shot dead or murdered. That averages out to 32 a day.