The awkward pivot from gun control to terrorism.

In the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre, and even before the cops killed Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, many commentators and politicos plugged in their usual call for gun control. As the facts about Farook and Malik emerged, the gun control message seemed rote and obtuse (or worse). The awkwardness of the pivot to a more terrorism-appropriate message is on display in this New Yorker piece by John Cassidy called "Domestic Terrorism and America’s Gun Dilemma":

Clearly, it would be in everybody’s interest if there were far fewer guns out there, especially fewer of the military-style weapons that also lend themselves to the massacre of civilians—as we discovered yet again on Wednesday, when, according to officials, a twenty-eight-year-old man, Syed Farook, and a twenty-seven-year-old woman, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at an office party in San Bernardino, California, killing at least fourteen people and injuring seventeen. But since there are already an estimated three hundred million guns in private hands (nobody knows the exact number), and U.S. gun laws are so lax that many Americans believe that they need a weapon, or many weapons, to defend themselves and their families.

With reports emerging that Farook and Malik may have had ties to radical Islamism, these concerns are going to be exacerbated. In a different country, a winning argument could be made that the threat of homegrown terrorism is another powerful reason for restricting the sale and circulation of deadly firearms. Here in the U.S., the mere mention of the “T” word, by making Americans even more fearful and providing more fodder for the gun lobby, is likely only to exacerbate the underlying problem....

Cassidy's so nervous that he nattered "exacerbate" twice in 3 sentences.