This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

The most important thing you need to know about yesterday’s tragic school shooting in Texas is that absolutely no laws are going to change as a result of it.In the 14 years since the Supreme Court found an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in the landmark case of D.C. v. Heller, the federal judiciary has only grown more conservative. The courts will likely bar any meaningful restrictions on the possession of firearms for at least another generation.

After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the outraged demands for action are inevitably derailed in Congress, disappointed gun-control advocates, and perplexed ordinary citizens, point their fingers at the influence of the National Rifle Association or the intransigent opposition of congressional Republicans.

Many of the first graders who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are sophomores at my son’s high school now. As a freshman, he is on a soccer team with some of them. Most afternoons, mastering their short passes and one-touch shots, they seem far past that day. Then casually, in conversation, a mother or father will mention a detail from their early childhoods—which elementary school they went to in town—and we’ll all quietly remember.

The mass shooter in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two adults. That means at some point he probably paused to reload. The mind goes to dark places when it imagines the seconds spent fumbling for fresh ammo, amid the sounds of death, and the click of a new magazine as a murderer’s hand smacks its baseplate home into the mag-well.