When it comes to anti-gun folks, I don’t expect all that much. They might be people I can get along with when the subject of guns isn’t on the table, but far too many of them expose themselves to be horrible, ghoulish people the moment a mass shooting happens.

They’ll use any horrific tragedy to advance an agenda, even if nothing in that agenda would have averted the tragedy in question.

A prime example of that is Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who we’ve written about before. She’s notorious for using whatever she can get away with to justify gun control.

The thing is, she actually believes folks like you and me actually want mass shootings.

What made the South Street shooting particularly nerve-rattling was how unhinged the situation seems to have been. Current reports suggest it started as a fight between two young men, but at least three other civilians and a police officer whipped out guns and sent bullets flying everywhere. There’s a very Wild West quality to the whole thing, except, you know, it happened in a 21st-century crowded city, with advanced gun tech, making the body count much higher than someone like Billy the Kid would have experienced.

This is all by design.

As Melissa Ryan wrote Monday morning in the Ctrl Alt Right Delete newsletter, “For the Right, mass shootings are a feature, not a bug.” And as I have been arguing for at Salon, mass shootings are effective for Republicans at demoralizing their opposition and training their base to unlearn any lingering sense of empathy. Historian Ruth Ben-Shiat argued in October in the Washington Post, that gun violence “fosters political, social and psychological conditions that are propitious for autocracy.” A major GOP campaign message going into the midterms is that “woke” Democrats are letting criminals run amok in the cities. Dramatic gun violence really helps sell this message, which is why Republicans are guaranteed to block any bill that would make it even slightly harder for violent and unhinged people to get guns.

This is absolutely vile and Salon, if they had any shame, would apologize for running it.

So would Marcotte, but again, that would require her to have a sense of shame.

Let’s break this down in small words so that anti-gun zealots like Marcotte can understand. Folks like me don’t support gun control because it does. Not. Work.

The vast majority of criminals get their guns illegally. That means new gun control won’t stop them from getting them but will cause problems for good guys who have a right to have them.

When we blame “woke” Democrats for “letting criminals run amok in the cities,” it’s because this wasn’t a problem before those “woke” Democrats started installing revolving doors on jail cells. Criminals get arrested and are back on the streets hours later. This happens over and over, only for them to eventually end up killing someone.

If she disagrees with that, fine. Let’s have that discussion.

But rather than just disagree, she tries to claim that Republicans are actually hoping for mass shootings? Meanwhile, who is it who latches onto every mass shooting and starts pushing for gun control laws before we even have any idea what just happened?

It’s not the GOP, that’s for damn sure.

Look, I’m shaking in fury as I write this because of Marcotte’s mere suggestion that someone like me would want this kind of thing. I’ve talked before about why I get angry when folks make the claim we’re OK with these shootings. Yet Marcotte is going even further, arguing that this is by design.

She knows it’s not. She’s just hoping that people will get so swept up in the outrage that they won’t think critically for a moment. That or she hopes it will pressure some Republicans to advance her preferred anti-gun agenda.

And her means of doing so is beyond vile.

Then again, that’s pretty on-brand for Marcotte.