Once upon a time, Esquire was the preeminent magazine for men’s fashion. If you wanted to be well-dressed, you likely read the magazine.

Yet in recent years, they’ve shifted from their roots. Like so many other publications, they routinely talk about politics instead of what their publication is supposed to be about.

And, frankly, like so many other publications, they don’t understand the topic in question.

That’s clear based on a recent op-ed on the Michigan State shooting.

But, to an absurd level, we have accepted living like this. We elect, and re-elect, people who feed that insane attraction to its firearms. We elect, and re-elect, people whose actions fly directly in the face of the clearly stated opinions of a majority of their fellow citizens. We elect, and re-elect, people like those chuckleheads in Missouri who want children armed without adult supervision. Me? I don’t think the Missouri legislature should operate without adult supervision. We have accepted that we are helpless citizens of the only country in the world where this kind of bloodshed happens. In journalism classes, they teach the five W’s and an H. The five W’s on these stories always change, but the H never changes. There is a never a mystery about the H, just ballistics and striations. This was a helluva way to mark the fifth anniversary of the Parkland massacre.

First, no one has accepted living like this. The problem this author really has is that the rest of us just don’t think his preferred response will work, so we refuse to bend over and take it like a champ and forfeit our right to keep and bear arms.

Nor have we accepted that we’re “helpless citizens of the only country in the world where this kind of bloodshed happens.” For one thing, we’re not the only nation this happens in. We’ve seen mass shootings all over the world. From Russia to the UK, we’ve seen mass shootings happen all over the place.

Additionally, no one on this side of the gun debate has accepted that we have to live like this, either. For us, the problem is that people like this Esquire writer refuse to acknowledge that gun control doesn’t work. As a result, literally any potential solution to mass shootings that’s not gun control gets shouted down.

So yeah, we’re going to see more of these. Then Esquire will keep writing op-eds about our “addiction” to guns, all while ignoring their own culpability in our failure to find a way to prevent such atrocities.

We’re not giving up our right to keep and bear arms. We’re not accepting any infringement on that right.

If our intrepid Esquire author really wants to address such shootings, then maybe he’d be willing to sit down and look at all the other areas where we can actually do something that won’t involve infringing upon our rights.

Of course, then he’d actually have to do more than bloviate in the pages of a once respected magazine.