Rusbridger had risen at the Guardian through the years when it not only had the support and fail-safe mechanism of the Scott Trust, but guaranteed operating income from public-service advertising. Nobody had to sell anything.

In the litany of issues that separate the two Americas - one more conservative and one more liberal, increasingly as opposed and intractable and opaque to each other as the Palestinians and Israelis - none is so fierce, precise, inviolable and confounding to the other side as guns.

Guns in America have an atavistic force. Possessing them, or the act of not possessing them, is an identity that seems to pass from father to son.

Michael Wolff Quotes