Following the mass shooting at a Nashville private school, Tennessee gun control advocates started feeling really empowered. A lot of people up that way started thinking that they might want gun control.

That’s normal after such a horrific event, even if it’s wrongheaded.

Yet, so far, nothing has happened.

Anti-gun Democrats in the state, though, are ready to step up their efforts.

ennessee Democratic leaders have begun a push for gun legislation including a new website and a statewide bus tour heading into a special session starting Aug. 21.

Gov. Bill Lee has said he will issue a call for the special session about a week before it is set to begin but has not yet issued specifics as he has met with interest groups on the topic over the past few months.

The Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus started TNUnderTheGun.com to post gun violence information which says that 29 people have been killed in mass shootings this year in Tennessee, including the three students and three staff members killed in the shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School that was an important part of the call for this special session.

…

State Democratic leaders also announced they would hold a statewide bus tour they say is not designed to be partisan where they hope to hear from Tennessee residents on gun control issues.

The tour will have eight stops, starting in Memphis and moving across the state over the two weeks heading into the special session with a final stop at the state capitol as the session begins.

“Too often we, state legislators, spend a great deal of time up here in the state capitol spinning our wheels about important issues,” House Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons said. “We want the people of Tennessee to be able to see us in person and share their opinions, ideas, concerns and objections directly with us in their own communities.”

Nothing about this is surprising, unfortunately. The ghoulish nature of gun control is that when there’s a dead body from a shooting, the anti-gun advocate must use it as a soapbox. They just can’t help themselves.

Then again, they have to push now or they’ll lose their opportunity.

What happens after something like Nashville is that people get very upset, very emotional, and very irrational. They’re ready to accept anything that promises to prevent such an awful tragedy, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

Yet as time passes, rationality returns.

They start to look at the proposals and think, “That doesn’t make a bit of sense.” They realize that if the shooter passed a background check, a universal background check law won’t do anything. They realize that even if the killer used an AR-15, they could well have killed just as many people with something else.

People start to realize that all of that anti-gun nonsense isn’t going to make anyone safer but it will create other problems.

So, their support wanes. They start looking at other things, and anti-gunners can’t have that.

They want to push to strike now because they don’t want the outrage to have faded too much. They want people angry, hurt, and upset because the only way gun control happens is if people are irrational enough to think it will help.

Which is what this is really about.