After the 9/11 attacks, I dutifully stocked up on rolls of duct tape and N-95 masks, as the government recommended.

Parents can't indulge our fears. We're supposed to make our kids feel safe, even if we don't feel safe ourselves.

I told my daughter that terrorists would love to attack Washington, but we, unlike the French, are an ocean away from Syria, that lots of smart people are working very hard to stop the terrorists, and that these terrorists are not very sophisticated.

By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don't carry guns to news conferences -- and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA's Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn't pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn't going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower.

After the 9/11 attacks, I dutifully stocked up on rolls of duct tape and N-95 masks, as the government recommended.

Living in the capital, I worry about terrorism, but I no longer panic. For this I have my child to thank.