A beautiful cake with an intricate fondant top. The scent of pure vanilla wafts through the air as you cut a piece and admire the pale, moist top layer. Beneath that layer is a creamy middle of succulent frosting with a hint of almond. And at the bottom, a layer of hard, crusty shit.

That's about what I felt like when I read this.

I mean it started so perfect. In the middle was joy to read

In recent election cycles, the greatest feat of liberal tight-rope walking has occurred not over abortion, but gun safety. Candidates talk about renewing the assault weapons ban, then mumble something about the rights of hunters. But there is a better way to take on this issue – one that would yield real reductions in violence without having an adverse impact on law-abiding gun owners.

There are 280 million firearms in private hands in America, and last year there were about 300,000 gun crimes. That means that at least 279.7 million guns did nothing wrong. We also know that in 89 percent of crimes, the person using the gun was not the person who originally bought it.

Truth! Honest truth! Such things not seen in newspapers in years

This indicates that the root of America's gun-crime problem is not the number of guns in the hands of Americans, but an extensive web of gun trafficking operations that funnel firearms to criminals. What we need, then, is a new national strategy to reduce gun violence: Don't restrict gun rights; instead, deepen the sense of gun ownership.

Then, just as you're enjoying your bite, you read this

One step is to make gun trafficking a federal crime, not a term of art. Trafficking should be redefined as selling multiple guns out of a home, car, street or park with two or more of the following characteristics: obliterated serial numbers, are stolen, are new in the box, or are sold to underage buyers or people with felony records. This would still allow individuals to privately sell firearms to people they know or trust, and it would put the onus on sellers to demand a background check for those they don't and allow authorities to crack down on those who sell guns illegally.

To that end, we also need to close the gun-show loophole. It is no coincidence that 13 of the top 14 crime-gun-exporting states do not require background checks for sales at shows. This loophole is exploited by buyers who obtain used guns to resell on the streets.

And it all started so well...