Gun Control is Dead For Now
What do conservative news baron Rupert Murdoch, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and actor Jason Alexander have in common? They’re among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun control –an issue that has resurfaced in the wake of the Aurora, Colo. movie theater massacre.
But don’t hold your breath. It ain’t gonna happen. So expect the bloody cycle to continue � the shocking deaths; grieving families; the sadly familiar media coverage about the killer(s), their stunned families and the lives of victims who endured terrifying final moments; the memorial services — and the brief suspension of 24/7 partisan warfare that’s merely formalized during election year.
A Gallup poll found that only 44 percent of the public doesn’t want stricter gun control. But when did lopsided poll numbers ever stop powerful interests? California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that this is an election year: “I think this is a bad time to embrace such a new subject,” she said on Fox News. “There has been no action because there is no outrage out there, people haven’t rallied forward.”
Indeed, nervous Democrats — including formerly staunchly pro-gun control President Barack Obama — aren’t making it an issue. Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney thinks existing laws are just peachy. And some GOPers absurdly insist it might have been less of a tragedy if more people in the theater had only had more guns. Meanwhile, the NRA’s feared political and financial clout gets an extra boost from Citizens United because even more money can now be funneled to defeat candidates who don’t vote as the NRA wishes.
The battle for gun control now resembles an old Wild West gunfight. Except in this one the NRA is armed and the gun-control guy has an empty holster.
Still, there have been surprising cracks in the anti-gun-control wall.
Murdoch Tweeted: “We have to do something about gun controls. Police license okay for hunting rifle or pistol for anyone without crim or pscho record. No more.”
And — would you believe it? — no one on Fox & Friends said anything snarky about their boss or called him a liberal out to destroy America’s constitution.
Next came Bill Kristol, about as GOP establishment as you can get, who declared on Fox: “People have a right to handguns and hunting rifles. I don’t think they have a right to semi-automatic, quasi-machine guns that can shoot hundred bullets at a time. And I actually think the Democrats are being foolish as they are being cowardly. I think there is more support for some moderate forms of gun control.”
But Democrats, independent voters and others calling for gun control aren’t as cushioned from counter attack as the NRA-friendly Murdoch and Kristol. My own modest website The Moderate Voice had some posts calling for tougher laws, which led to a Tweet claiming TMV “only wanted the government to have guns.” There, in a nutshell you have how the debate plays out: if you seek tougher laws they charge you’re trying to take all guns away. N-o-p-e.
After Alexander advocated tougher laws in a Tweet and was inundated with angry responses, he wrote a longer form answer that, in part, said:
“So, sorry those of you who tell me I’m an actor, or a has-been or an idiot or a commie or a liberal and that I should shut up. You can not watch my stuff, you can unfollow and you can call me all the names you like. I may even share some of them with my global audience so everyone can get a little taste of who you are. But this is not the time for reasonable people, on both sides of this issue, to be silent. We owe it to the people whose lives were ended and ruined [in Aurora] to insist on a real discussion and hopefully on some real action.”
A real discussion? That assumes being honest. Even a porcupine knows the founders didn’t write the second amendment with AR-15 assault weapons in mind. As satirist Andy Borowitz notes: “When the 2nd Amendment was written the most lethal gun available was the musket.”
A real discussion will wait a while.
Future horrors, tears, and grief won’t.
Copyright 2012 Joe Gandelman. This weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
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I still think the second amendment gives us the right to bear muzzle loaders and swords. Noe I wouldn’t know what to do with a sword but I do own a muzzle loader.
“A real discussion? That assumes being honest.”
I’ve been waiting for a post like this, Joe.
The fact of the matter is that some very powerful interests are interested in having no discussion whatsoever.
Litmus tests are the equivalent of political currency nowadays. If you don’t affirm your support for Grover’s tax pledge, you are shown the door.
If you don’t affirm your unconditional support for the 2nd Amendment, you are shown the door.
You cannot be anywhere in between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in today’s political environment.
In an unexpected development, I just had my unqualified support for the late Sally Ride’s posthumous coming out called into question for no other reason than I didn’t choose my words carefully enough. I was accused of “casual homophobia.”
You are either with us, or you are against us, is infecting our public discourse on so many levels.
Good to see Bill Kristol having a moment of lucidity. I’ll have to remember that.
“But when did lopsided poll numbers ever stop powerful interests?”
Hardly ever in today’s world, however the “poll” coming up in November could be an exception.
As for the need for gun control, if people don’t get outraged enough this time around I guess we’ll just have wait until an even worse domestic tragedy occurs. And the time after that. And the time after that. Etc. Meanwhile the spine deficits among what passes for leadership in this country are likely to continue unabated, as will the mindless rhetoric of the pro-gun lobby.
This issue is no different than any other issue facing this country. There is no moderation in any position most anyone in congress hold today.
For instance, say “gun control” and instantly you have the far left jumping on the band wagon to eliminate anything that is not a bolt action rifle or holds more than 6 bullets in a hand gun. On the far right will be those that demand anything for anyone without regard to how dangerious the gun is in the hands of the wrong people.
Herein lies the problem. What we lack in this country is a moderate form of government that can define sensible legislation that allows gun ownership, but does not begin the process for a return to only allowing the “right to bear muzzle loaders and swords.”
With positions such as these, it insures the far rright will continue to put everything into the ownership rights to own anything anywhere.
Sorry RP, wornout characterizations like those just don’t cut it anymore. People need to stop being so wishy washy, not acquiesce to it. There is nothing extreme about common sense regulation. I realize the concept of common sense can be pretty damned elastic for some people but endless relativism won’t lead us to any solutions. At some point people have to stop rationalizing, placating and accepting the fail. They need to get up on their hind legs and show a little courage.
Zephyr..I agree totlly. Common sense regulation.
But when any gun control measure begins to be talked about, little of that conversation turns out to be common sense.
Some places want to ban hand guns all together, even for your own home protection. Some places want to ban conceiled carry. Others do not want any law against anything.
I had a good friend who was a retired marine officer who had inquired into a hand gun and a carry permit. For some reason he procrastinated and did not get the gun. On Good Friday a couple years ago, while walking home from coffee at Starbucks with his wife who went on to work, a young man approached him in a upper middle class neighborhood, pulled a gun, demanded his wallet and then shot and killed him. Had my friend been carrying, I would have given him a 75% chance that he would be alive and the young man dead. So I do believe in the right to carry a gun, but as you said, this needs to be sensible regulation and right now there are too many wing nuts on both sides that have the loudest voices turning the moderate views off.
There is a middle ground between muzzle loaders and AK assault rifles with 100 clip rounds.
Well I know of a black teenager who was on his way home from a convenience store in a upper middle class neighborhood when he was approached and shot dead by a man with a concealed gun permit.
I’d have given him a 99.9% chance of still be alive had the CC Permit not been issued.
On this point I fully agree.
I agree with the need for middle ground too, although Ron’s original reference to muzzleloaders is a fair and valid point insofar as baseline weaponry from the founders perspectives. I happen to think 8 rounds is more than sufficient capacity for handguns for example, and I personally see no need for semi-auto rifles or shotguns. Anyone who needs that sort of action in long guns needs to improve their shooting skills.
So there can’t be any right of free speach on the net. No right to privacy online. Really the way some will twist temselves is unreal.
Don’t be so tough on yourself Ellis.
What you have an elementary school flashback? The whole “I’m rubber you’re glue” thing? If anyone truly believes the 2nd only pertains to muskets give one example where they hold the same belief to anything else in the constitution. Otherwise it’s stupid, shallow, and transparent.
Former Bush White House Press Secretary Michael Gerson writing in the Washington Post today calls for some reasonable balance regarding second amendment rights. He says: “the guarantees of the Second Amendment are no more absolute than the guarantees of the First. The right to keep and bear arms does not mean the right to keep and bear tanks, shoulder-launched missiles or fully automatic machine guns”. He further says: “Reasonable gun laws are not a panacea. But neither are they a threat to the Constitution. They merit a debate — driven not by ideology but by prudential judgments on public safety.” Good to see some bipartisan support for balancing second amendment rights with concerns for public safety.