“I think it’s important, on a day like today,” said White House spokesperson Jay Carney, “to view this as I know the president, as a father, does, and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and to support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event. I’m sure [there] will be rather a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don’t think today is that day. I think that day will come, but today’s not that day.”

But as my friend Mike Siroky said: “Grow a gut. Mr. President … It was not time to talk gun control while the Democrats had no primaries. It was not time to talk gun control during the election campaign. It was not time to talk gun control in the aura of awesomeness after the decidedly supportive election. It was not time to talk control before the movie theater shootings in Colorado. It was not time to talk control after the movie theater shootings in Colorado. It was not time to talk gun control before the Sikh temple shootings a few months later. It was not time to talk gun control after the Sikh temple shootings. It was not time to talk gun control before children at their school were gunned down in Connecticut. It is not time to talk gun control now that it has happened.

“It seems it will never be time for this administration. Obama need not worry about getting elected to anything else ever again. He has no reason to worry about supposed baggage from talking gun control. He ought to be first, not last, on the bandwagon. He ought to be cracking the whip on the horses pulling the bandwagon, riding shotgun for us all. Instead, he sends out some cipher of a pensive-looking repugnant mouthpiece to tell us it is not time to talk about gun control.

“Put it on the national agenda.

“Do something.”