The soul-chilling tragedy at Newtown, Conn., engenders a panic that leaves us vulnerable to exploitation. Opportunistic politicians portray the massacre as a crisis and start throwing out “solutions” that infringe on the right to bear arms while increasing the likelihood of more massacres.

Despite its horror, the Newtown massacre is not a crisis of frequent mass shootings, nor is it a reason to eviscerate the Second Amendment.

Let the states experiment to make children safer. Some have done that with “gun-free zones,” and some, such as Utah, with armed protection.

We’ll see what works.

Federal solutions subject the entire country to something possibly as ineffective as the Brady Bill. That bill, law for about a decade, sounded good but failed to decrease mass killings or gun violence.

So far the states’ experiments validate thepolitically incorrect truth that guns in the hands of good guys make law-abiding citizens safer. John R. Lott’s 1998 book, “More Guns, Less Violence,” published by the University of Chicago, has been widely ignored, but never validly refuted. He demonstrated through careful research that gun-free zones and jurisdictions with the most restrictive gun laws experience higher rates of gun violence.

It’s no mystery: Murderers prefer defenseless victims.

Contrast the unrestrained carnage at the “gun-free” Newtown school with the incident in Webster, N.Y., two weeks later. Policethwarted a plan, by a felon who illegally possessed guns, to burn a neighborhood. The police chief told CNN, “Had the police oft cer not been there, more people would have been killed, because he immediately engaged the shooter with a rifl e.”

It is one thing for distraught people to grasp at superficially appealing nonsolutions. It is very diff erent for politicians, educated people entrusted to rationally make laws, to propose similar policies.

Some politicians exploit the Newtown tragedy by using the “fallacy of misleading vividness,” which makes a rare incident seem common. Misleading vividness is a logical fallacy that leads us to overestimate the likelihood of a rare event because the vividness, usually horror, of the event makes such a strong impression.

So some people envision a horrific airplane crash and avoid fl ying. Instead they use a much more dangeroustransportation mode - driving.

Mass shootings in the U.S. are rare, though not rare enough. Counting from Columbine, about 240 people have died in mass shootings.

Vehicle accidents claimed the lives of 33,000 Americans in 2010. Which is the more likely threat?

Educated speakers who use fallacious logic, common in political rhetoric, generally disrespect the audience, have a hidden agenda or both.

Politically or logically unable to advocate their true agenda, they encourage panicked, unthinking responses to false appeals.

Such rhetoric is especially suspect when the advocate’s behavior shows he or she does not even practice the proposed solution.

The politicians supposedly outraged over proposals for armed police in schools work in just such an environment - gun free with armed protection. It takes the insouciance of one enjoyingthat well-protected life to oppose so protecting our children.

If they really believed gun-free zones worked without armed protection, President Barack Obama and Congress would dismiss their own security, focus the Secret Service exclusively on counterfeiting issues, redeploy the Capital Police to crime-ridden southeast D.C.

and disband the Executive Protective Service. Don’t hold your breath for this to happen.

Only one method could make gun-free zones safer without armed protection.

The government would have to confiscate the 270 million private guns in the U.S. Confi scation has worked in such locales as Germany in the 1930s, Russia from the 20th century on, and so on.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said confiscation is on the table in New York. Let him start with the criminals, then the mentally unbalanced. After that, come for the peaceful gun owners’ weapons.

Fortunately, such an action would be so obviously unconstitutional not even Chief Justice John Roberts could impute the law with words to fi x it.

Short-term reduction of the danger in schools requires responsible adults, whether police or carefully regulated teachers, with secure arms.

Over the longer term, we need to address what Pope John Paul II’s words called “the culture of death.” That culture cheapens life with abortion on demand, the desensitizing “violence porn” of video games, graphic television and movies, and the disrespect for human life implicit in our throwing the mentally ill to the streets.

Meanwhile we also need to guard against those who seek to manipulate us for their own purposes by exploiting tragedy.

BUDDY ROGERS IS A RETIRED ARMY OFFICER WHO LIVES IN ROGERS. HE IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE NRA.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 12/30/2012