To its credit, "Run Hide Fight" -- a $200,000 production made with public funds -- is a relatively common-sense how-to primer. It's not easy to make a movie about a scenario no one wants to envision. But in the aftermath of the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, it's been hard to think about much else. Since that December day, a number of theories on how to avoid future tragedies – or at best curtail the damage – have emerged. Many of them have been full-on bananas – from the NRA's suggestion we arm our schools to the National Review's roundtable that featured the brilliant hope of relying on "huskier 12-year-old boys."

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But nearly three weeks after the Dec. 14 bloodbath, the American far right – from elements of the Tea Party to bigoted bloggers to conspiracy theorists – is working itself into an absolute frothy uproar at even the possibility that it may become more difficult to purchase a military-style assault rifle or a magazine that carries dozens of bullets.

It’s reminiscent of the reaction that surrounded the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. That legislation, which applied only to newly manufactured guns, helped fuel a powerful militia movement – one that has been eclipsed by the recent surge in the anti-government “Patriot” movement, which includes armed militias.

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The two launched the project because, as Slate writes, there are few real-time chronicles of daily gun deaths in the United States, despite the daily mention of firearms and gun politics in the media since the shooting. In fact, the onslaught of reporting on guns has been so intense, The Huffington Post published an article this morning with the headline “So You’re Bored of the Newtown Massacre?”

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The exercise starts with a militarized baseline, as both shooters unloaded designed-for-damage rounds from high-capacity magazines loaded into assault rifles. Improving their killing efficiency would require one of two things: the ability to shoot more bullets faster, or more time. A fully automatic machine gun would provide the first. More minutes to hunt, meanwhile, might be gained by employing a noise suppressor, those metallic tubes better known as silencers. By muffling the noise generated with every shot by sonic booms and gas release, a silencer would provide a new degree of intimacy for public mass murder, delaying by crucial seconds or minutes the moment when someone calls the police after overhearing strange bangs coming from Theater 4 or Classroom D. The same qualities that make silencers the accessory of choice for targeted assassination offer advantages to the armed psychopath set on indiscriminate mass murder.

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The last bill would have prohibited any "magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition" except for any "attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition." Large-capacity magazines were used in the Aurora and Newtown massacres.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has also promised to introduce an assault weapons ban when the new Congress convenes. That bill is modeled on the federal ban, which expired in 2004. Both new bills would not outlaw the possession of banned equipment that is already in circulation. Senator Feinstein has cited a Department of Justice study that the ban reduced gun deaths by 6.7 percent.

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Federal law prohibits gun sales to anyone who was declared mentally unfit by a court. In Bill Clinton’s first term, Congress passed a law requiring states to report these mental health records to the FBI. But in 1997, the Supreme Court threw out that requirement, saying states could share whatever information they wanted to—or more likely not share it.

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"Let's be serious" Charles Krauthammer, pundit and former practicing psychiatrist, wrote recently in the Washington Post:

Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier days they did not roam free. As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or to others. I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.

Why do you think we have so many homeless? Destitution? Poverty has declined since the 1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on.

A tiny percentage of the mentally ill become mass killers. Just about everyone around Tucson shooter Jared Loughner sensed he was mentally ill and dangerous. But in effect, he had to kill before he could be put away — and (forcibly) treated.

Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker. Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil-commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.

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10 Minutes – Length of time Adam Lanza was shooting

90 (more than) – Number of bullets shot

38 – Number of mass shootings in 2012

$50,000 – Average cost of medical treatment per homicide shooting victim

$2.3 Billion – Total lifetime medical costs for gunshot injuries (as of 1999)

$6 Million – Those medical costs per day

49 Percent – Amount of those lifetime medical costs paid by taxpayers

20 Percent – Number of gun owners with 65 percent of the firearms in the U.S.

36,000 – Number of guns thrown away each year

16,808,538 – Number of applications to purchase guns in the U.S. from January – November 2012 from legal dealers (does not include gun shows or private sales)

5X – Amount this could arm every NATO member state’s armed forces

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This morning, NRA president Wayne LaPierre held a press conference — occasionally interrupted by protesters — in which he explained where the organization stood in light of last week’s violence. But rather than stand behind the modest gun-regulation efforts brewing in Congress or even offer a simple message of condolence, LaPierre decided to go on the offensive, blaming everything from video games, movies, and music — "Natural Born Killers," a 20-year-old film, received a shout out — to Obama’s budget for the proliferation of mass shooters.

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Surprise, it's Rush Limbaugh.

On his radio show this afternoon, Limbaugh called the NRA leader "an adult looking for real solutions," and said he was "disrespected" by Code Pink protesters who, he claimed, would never interrupt a hearing on Benghazi.

"No matter what he said, Wayne LaPierre sounded like an adult looking for real solutions, but that's not what this country's interested in right now. Sorry. The adults are not running this show," said Limbaugh.

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Yes, it's important to focus attention on the increase in the size and savagery of the murders: Six of the 12 most deadly shootings in our history have occurred within the past five years. The vast majority of the world's worst mass shootings have taken place in the United States. And there have been 65 mass shootings since Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in 2009. Still, despite their horror, mass murders like Newtown are thankfully rare. So we must pay attention to the daily violence, too. Nearly 13,000 homicides were committed in the U.S. in 2010, 8,775 with firearms. So in addition to the most heartbreaking, large-scale killings, the problem is pervasive and the bloodshed overwhelming.

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On Monday, the network announced that "'American Guns' concluded earlier this year," adding, "Discovery Channel chose not to renew the series and has no plans to air repeats of the show." Yet Deadline notes that Discovery is conspicuously not airing reruns of the show as well. The network is likewise bidding adieu to "Ted Nugent’s Gun Country," with a confirmation that Nugent will not be returning any time soon. His rootin' tootin' show aired as a special in the fall, but at the time, the "musician/hunter" told Armed America Radio that Discovery "want[s] to do it as a regular feature," and to "expect that there will be at least a dozen shows a year." Also, there's an Armed America Radio.

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If 2011 numbers are predictive, more than 12,000 people will be killed by guns in America this year.

That’s four times the number of people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet while we mourned together as a nation after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and then went to war against al-Qaida and two sovereign nations, it appears to have taken 20 schoolchildren being gunned down in Connecticut for politicians of either party to challenge the power of the NRA.

And this when even a strong majority of NRA members support common-sense gun control! Exactly how many bodies have to pile up for Washington to find the will to act?

Every day in America, 34 Americans are killed by guns. Every day in America, at least one of those killed is under the age of 14. In the wake of all-too-frequent mass shootings, we tend to ignore the even more frequent, quotidian gun deaths that are devastating our communities, destroying families and endangering our children. Here are just a few stories about lives that might have been saved with sensible gun laws.

Linkin Leatham, 2

Linkin’s parents called their son the “miracle baby” for having overcome several complications at birth and defying doctors’ expectations that he wouldn’t survive.  Then, in September, 2-year-old Linkin picked up his father’s handgun and shot himself in the eye, ultimately dying from his wounds. Linkin’s father is a Utah police officer, though the weapon involved in the shooting was not his service weapon.

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Assault, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a weapon charges were filed against 57-year-old Lester Davis of Wentzville following the shooting Tuesday at All Cuts Barber Shop in Wentzville.

A patron made the comment that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School made him want to kill the suspect. For unknown reasons, police say Davis took the comment as a threat and asked, “You want to murder me?”

Davis then allegedly went to his car, retrieved a pistol and fired three times in the customer’s direction. No one was hurt.

Davis turned himself in and is jailed on $400,000 bond.

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This weekend I will fly to JFK—silently aware of the grim ballistic association—and then drive with my wife and eight-year-old daughter to Newtown, CT.

To celebrate Christmas.

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At St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, a service for first-grader James Mattioli had not concluded when mourners began arriving for the funeral of little Jessica Rekos, the first of eight to be held in the coming days at the church. Several more sets of funerals and visitation hours were set throughout town Wednesday.

Students went back to classes the day before, except for those at Sandy Hook Elementary, where a lone gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle slaughtered the children, six adults and himself by the time Friday's massacre ended. He also killed his mother at her home.

Pupils at Sandy Hook, which serves kindergarten through fourth grade, will resume classes in a formerly shuttered school in a neighboring community after the winter break, the Connecticut Post reported.

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But Solomon's brilliant "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity" -- a staple on year-end best book lists -- has been about the only book on my mind since Friday's horrific massacre in Newtown, Conn.

The great genius of Solomon's book comes in its empathy for the parents and children who find themselves in situations they never imagined. There's a chapter on children with autism and Asperger's. And in another, he writes about getting to know the parents of one of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold, as he sought to understand how two loving parents could end up, unknowingly, raising a killer.

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I did not. Over decades my paralysis advanced, and I shifted from crutch to wheelchair. I was mostly out of work until my early 30s. Marriage came late. Today, my neurology remains fragile. Life seems tinged with loss, poignancy – and anger.

Anger is what takes over in the wake of mass shootings. After the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, I quit my high-tech job and went to work for a gun control nonprofit. For a while, there seemed to be hope for reining in the nation's amateur arsenal. When the nonprofit went broke, I drove my wheelchair to a quiet corner of a parking lot and cried.

Since then, I have watched the noisy aftermath of other mass shootings with a sinking heart. Virginia Tech. Aurora, Colo. The pattern is predictable and depressing. For days or weeks, outrage over gun violence dominates the media. But eventually every element of American's gun madness falls back into place. In the U.S., tracing a stolen car is relatively easy but tracing a stolen handgun is virtually impossible, thanks to the NRA. Now, in the wake of Sandy Hook, I despairingly ask: Is there any way out?

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Hacker collective Anonymous was swift to respond, releasing private information of  Westboro members including email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses. This video, decrying the church for spreading “seeds of hatred,” was also released. It warns, “We will destroy you. We are coming.”

An Anonymous source has said it intends to keep the website offline throughout the day, with plans to take it over completely and deface it.

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