In the wake of a mass shooting, there’s going to be talk of gun control. We all know it’s coming. We brace for it and we dig in knowing that some people will continue to try and push for it.

Never mind that we find time and time again that gun control doesn’t work. Never mind that we routinely see gun control fail to stop these attacks, such as the shooting in Indianapolis or the earlier on in Boulder. None of that matters to some people.

No, if you’re not in favor of gun control, you’re in favor of mass shootings.

At one time, the prevailing question was whether we can do anything at all about gunshot deaths and woundings in this country. There has been a debate about the effectiveness of a potential  “assault weapons ban,” or even whether that ban could be enforced at all. If Chicago limits purchases of firearms, what is to stop people from driving over to Indiana to buy whatever they want?

But for the past few years, the debate seems to be whether a weapons ban is even desirable. Yes, there is a vociferous demand for weapons control on one side of the debate, particularly among the parents and classmates of the dead.

But there is another side to the debate. It’s about the thoughts and concerns of the owners of all those high powered semiautomatic rifl es. At the moment, it is characterized by its silence.

And that silence is an argument in and of itself. It is saying that the current level of mass casualty shootings is an acceptable number. If it wasn’t acceptable, we would be seeing and hearing some level of debate within the gun lobby and the anti-gun-control faction.

But we are not.

In other words, anything other than capitulation with anti-gun demands is tantamount to supporting mass murder.

Never mind that we have engaged in debate. We’re more than willing to talk about potential solutions. The problem is that people like the author don’t want to hear them unless we’re talking about gun control.

Let’s remember the aftermath of Parkland. The pro-gun side talked about trying to harden schools, to make them less likely to be viable targets for mass shootings. We were shouted down.

David Hogg and many of his fellow March For Our Lives founders lamented being required to wear clear backpacks to school, despite the fact that such an effort would make it harder for a would-be shooter to smuggle a gun into the school.

See, over and over again, people like this pretend the only potential solution to mass shootings is gun control and argue that if you don’t agree, you support them. Oh, how that line of “argument” royally pisses me off. Unlike this jackwagon, those aren’t just numbers. I’ve known one of the victims. It was someone I actually cared about and have mourned for years since.

To argue that those of us who have lost someone but don’t support gun control actually support the killers is insulting, to say the least. It’s also idiotic.

But hey, they don’t have to answer for their insults. They can cause offense and there are absolutely no ramifications for it. Meanwhile, we’re supposed to play nice and go along. That’s why some GOP leaders refuse to vote on pro-gun measures in the wake of a mass shooting, even if the law had no bearing on the shooting itself.

Well, I’m tired of fighting with one hand tied behind my back and I’m tired of letting dipsticks like this frame the debate as either gun control or nothing.

Right now, we know next to nothing about why mass shootings happen. We don’t understand the mechanisms in place that would drive someone to carry out these kinds of attacks. We don’t have any of that.

What we do know is that some of them have clearly sought infamy. They wanted to be famous killers. So, let’s stop publishing their names everywhere. Make them obscure nobodies. Remove that from the possible list of reasons to do something like this.

Honestly, this is just the start. There are tons of options to explore, none of which are gun control.

But for some people, if you’re not talking gun control, you’re not talking seriously.

People like that can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care.