 Americans have a right to defend themselves.   Banning one type of gun will lead to banning all guns.   We can t limit the Second Amendment.   We re one justice away from repealing the Second Amendment.   Democrats want to take your guns and leave you defenseless.   Expanded background checks will lead to a registry, and then government tracking and privacy invasion.  And so forth.These are just a few of the fear-mongering talking points we hear from the NRA and their ilk, talking heads, and mouthpieces, every time there s a mass shooting.But guess what? These talking points, which are enshrined in both policy and paranoid right-wing culture, and have made us less safe than ever, helped to cause the Orlando massacre. We could explain in detail, but Politico has a cartoon that explains it far better in a single wallop of a punch:The latest political cartoon from the desk of POLITICO s Matt @Wuerker https://t.co/vyEgFlBPPx pic.twitter.com/CclsKwABjV  POLITICO (@politico) June 13, 2016The point of the cartoon is that anybody can donate to the NRA, and the NRA then uses its not-inconsiderable financial and political clout to loosen gun laws under the absolute lie of,  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Thanks to them, gun laws either get loosened, or they stay as they are. Then people like Omar Mateen, who was on the FBI s radar for potential ties to terrorist groups, can get whatever kinds of guns they want perfectly legally. There is no explaining that away.The NRA s hands are soaked in the fresh blood of the victims of the Orlando massacre, and what do they have to say about it? Nothing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada, just like after Sandy Hook. They re hiding like the sick cowards they are until they can get some cold-blooded fuckery together that makes them appear as white as snow in all of this.Florida has some of the loosest gun laws in the country. Where were all the good guys with guns at Pulse? Why didn t they stop this? Why didn t someone pull out their own weapon and gun Mateen down before he was able to shoot over 100 people? We challenge the NRA and all their rabid sycophants to answer that question.In the meantime, Politico and its cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, are to be commended for that cartoon. It puts what s happening to our country into sharp relief in a way that mere words can t.Featured image by Scott Olson/Getty Images