They are the commonplace tragedies that occur every day in communities across the U.S. The smoldering anger between a husband and wife ignites and ends with a pistol shot. The suffocating weight of depression vanishes, with gunfire, into the imagined peace of death. A hunting trip turns tragic, and a family is destroyed. The stupidity of playing with a loaded weapon leaves a young boy dead. The momentary incivility of a pair of barroom brawlers results in bloody death.
Events like these happen so often that Americans' sense of horror and outrage has been numbed. Death by gunfire has become nearly...