Jackie Calmes: Big Lie No. 2 — Congress has done all it can 'on guns'

"It's a horrible, horrible situation, and we're not going to fix it."

There you have it: With that throwaway line to reporters on the Capitol steps Monday, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee summed up the Republican Party's deliberate impotence against an epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings that distinguishes this nation from just about all others.

Six of Burchett's fellow Tennesseans — three 9-year-olds and three adults roughly his age — had just been slaughtered at a private Presbyterian school in Nashville by the latest killer wielding assault weapons. The congressman was saying that fix" the problem of record shootings. Yet "won't" applies as well to Republicans. Predictably, they've stuck to their two-pronged agenda on gun massacres: thoughts and prayers. (Perversely, Republican Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, has another idea. His , which he unveiled at a gun store, would designate the AR-15 as the "National Gun of the United States.")