The Nashville school shooting highlights the partisan divide over gun legislation

America's latest mass shooting, this time at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn., has recalled nightmarish memories and raised one of the most vexing of political questions.

Before the funerals had even begun for the three children and three adults slain on Monday, the well-practiced roaring and debate had resumed in Congress. And so had the usual expressions of exasperation, because those who have followed the issue in recent decades have had an education in frustration and futility.

Democrats this week were once again asking how a person disturbed enough to use military-style weaponry on children could have such easy access to such weaponry. They want more legal restraints on guns.

President Biden this week called for the reinstatement of a ban on military-style assault weapons, a ban first instituted in 1994 but allowed to lapse a decade later. Bills that would restore the ban had already been introduced in both the Senate (S. 25) and House (H.R. 698) this year, following the Chinese New