Rep. Eric “Nuke ’em All” Swalwell is at it again.

No, he’s not sleeping with a Chinese spy. At least, not that we’re aware of, anyway. What he’s doing again is his typical anti-gun rhetoric without any regard for, you know, facts.

It’s very simple: you’re either here for the kids or the killers. Time and again, Republicans have chosen their side.

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) February 15, 2023

Now, obviously, I have issues with this kind of thing. I have reasons to be pissed about this kind of rhetoric. Our own Ryan Petty has even more reason to be angry at this nonsense.

See, this frothing rage is predicated on the idea that Republicans actually think gun control works. Why else would it be evil to oppose it? It can’t be because GOP members of Congress believe that the right to keep and bear arms is as absolute as they come or anything. It can’t be that they just don’t think gun control would make a difference.

And, as Zachary Faria writes over at the Washington Examiner, they’ve got reason to believe it wouldn’t.

So let’s extend a challenge to Eric Swalwell. Set aside how obnoxious it is to suggest that Republicans deliberately “side” with those who kill children. Could he name just one policy that would have prevented this shooting? Surely he must be able to think of one for him to fire off such inflammatory remarks, right?

The answer is that he could not name one such policy. The shooter at Michigan State almost certainly used a handgun, as evidenced by the photos of him released by police. That means that a ban on “assault weapons” or AR-15s would have done nothing. Arbitrary limits on magazine capacity are irrelevant, as is the possibility that a universal background check law would have done anything since the shooter was able to legally purchase firearms by all indications.

Michigan State University is also a gun-free zone, though I suspect Democrats won’t really want to talk about that.

The shooter would be able to legally buy a gun because he wasn’t a convicted felon, which he should have been. He was able to plead down from a felony to a misdemeanor thanks to then-Ingham County District Attorney Carol Siemon. Had he been convicted of a felony, he could still be in prison right now and would be unable to legally purchase a firearm when he got out. But Siemon believes in letting criminals off the hook because of “dramatic racial inequity,” so she let him off with a slap on the wrist.

In other words, as with so many other mass shootings, the gun laws already in place didn’t do what they were supposed to do. Why it’s almost like gun control doesn’t work at all.

Swalwell can make all the wild accusations he wants, but while he can claim this gun control law or that gun control law would have changed things, the reality is that he can’t really show one that would have.

Yet we can show plenty that were already on the books that didn’t.

Frankly, though, I have to admit that I’m impressed with Swalwell. I didn’t think I could loathe him any more than I already did, yet here we are.