Multiple Offsetting Fouls: Foul III--Gun-spiracies?

This writer has opined elsewhere that no one should offer an opinion regarding the 2nd amendment until they've read Adam Winkler's Gun Fight, Michael Waldman's The Second Amendment: A Biography [this one should especially required reading for ostensible "originalists"], or anything/everything Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has written on the subject. However, one particular conspiracy being proferred in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre reminded me of something I learned in my yeshiva days: the Sabbatical gatherer of wood executed in Numbers 15:36 is identified as such by his own daughters [as Zelophchad] in 27:3, the theory being that he sacrificed himself so that the rest of the Children of Israel would take the Sabbath seriously.

Forget for a second that there are those saying that Stephen Paddock was a patsy [THAT might be more reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens' travels in Pakistan after 9/11, where he encountered people who praised Osama bin Laden for bringing down the Twin Towers, while saying at the same time of course he didn't, it was the Mossad]. Mark Steyn--whose writings I usually admire to a point--seems to have gone overboard by giving any credence to this particular theory: "[Paddock] wished to telegraph to America in graphic form the hard irrefutable evidence that guns and gun ownership, and the ease of gun purchase in America are an evil and must be controlled." This reminded me of the aforementioned lesson of Zelophchad, at which point I reminded myself that, as his daughters note, "he died because of his own sin"; he didn't take others and innocents with him.

Additionally, another generally admirable pundit, Peggy Noonan, seemed to present gun rights as so fundamentally linked to a whole array of legitimate conservative concerns that she started to sound like a conservative hybrid of a Linda Sarsour intersectionalist and a Karen Armstrong-style apologist; almost as if, despite herself, upholding the Obamanian "clinging to guns and religion". [Then again, the "2nd amendment people" might not have appreciated her going on the air with Mika and saying "I never think it’s the wrong time to talk about gun control."]

Rule of thumb for conservatives: when you start to even sound apologetically intersectional or intersectionally apologetic, stand athwart yourself and yell "Stop!!!"

[I would try suggesting not shooting yourself in the foot, but "2nd amendment people" would rebuff me by arguing that the gun is protected. Didn't work for Plaxico Burress, though.]