Michigan State has added a familiar wrinkle to the gun control debate. As we’ve long seen, such incidents have a profound effect on what we talk about and gives resolve to those who would infringe on our right to keep and bear arms.

That’s unsurprising.

However, as someone who opposes gun control and supports lawmakers who oppose it as well, I’m glad to see their own resolve remains firm.

But an editorial from the Las Vegas Sun seems to think they owe explanations.

After all, the headline reads, “Lawmakers who don’t support gun control own explanation to victims.”

Three young people are dead. Five more are critically injured. The victims were all students at Michigan State University with bright futures ahead of them. They died in the 67th mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. We’re only 45 days into the year. The archive defines a mass shooting as one with four or more victims not including the gunman.

That’s their first mistake. The Gun Violence Archive contrived a definition designed to inflate the number of mass shootings to make the issue seem worse than it is. It’s an activist organization disguised as a simple information clearinghouse.

It’s none of that.

But that is just the start of the editorial. The rest gets into a lot of stupidity we’ve debunked a thousand times already, but here’s how they wrap up:

Responsible lawmakers should not allow themselves to make life and death decisions without a full understanding of the lives of the people whose death they are enabling. It isn’t right for current law to place far more restrictions on owning and operating a vehicle designed for transportation than a weapon designed for death.

The overwhelming majority of Americans support reasonable gun control. Now it’s time for elected officials to listen and act, before the next group of young people with bright futures end up dead or hospitalized. At the very least, if they’re going to continue putting firearms into the hands of criminals, they should be forced to do so while looking into the eyes of a parent whose child died because of gun violence.

Except that criminals are already prohibited from lawfully obtaining firearms. Why is that so hard for the editorial board of the Sun to comprehend?

As such, though, those lawmakers owe no one an explanation because this is nothing but a straw man put up by an editorial board that knows he won’t actually have to answer to criticism. They’ll just ignore it.

The truth of the matter is that if we’re going to play that game, anti-gun lawmakers owe an explanation to every person who watched a loved one die because of the gun control schemes they support prevented them from defending their own life.

At one point, the editorial board claims they have a long list of examples where people didn’t act or made things worse. I’m sure they do.

But what we have is data showing that millions of people defend their life or the life of another with a firearm. That trumps a series of anecdotes claiming the opposite.

Pro-gun lawmakers owe no explanation. The editorial board and their favored politicians, however, do.