A lot of people thought the Newtown massacre would lead to more gun control, but we know that never happened. The New York Times charts the gun-law changes since Newtown, noting that they've mostly gone the other way:
In the 12 months since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., almost every state has enacted at least one new gun law. Nearly two-thirds of the new laws ease restrictions and expand the rights of gun owners. Most of those bills were approved in states controlled by Republicans....
Republicans right now are dreaming of a Senate takeover in 2014 or 2016, and a presidential victory in 2016 if they can find the right candidate. If all that happens, it won't be because America is in love with Republicans -- it'll be because of Obama fatigue or Democrat fatigue, or because the public has begun to agree with the Beltway-insider notion that voting for Hillary Clinton is voting for a tired old dynasty and a creaky old overrated woman we're all sick of. It could happen.
If it does, and if the new president has a Republican Congress, I think we're going to get some of these loosened gun laws nationwide. I could imagine one of the further-right GOP presidential candidates advocating a national loosening of the gun laws in the primaries, which might push the less-extreme winner to the right on the issue.
With an all-GOP government, I imagine the pro-gun ALEC will have many proposals for national laws. We've already seen a bill in Congress requiring every state to recognize concealed-carry permits held by other states' residents (i.e., a Texas resident with the legal right to concealed carry could take that right rto Times Square); this passed the House in 2011, but has never passed the Senate.
I'm sure the top priority of an all-GOP federal government will be a remaking of the economic order to further comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. But I think guns could be in the mix of the likely blitzkrieg of revanchist legislation. I could certainly imagine a GOP Senate piously invoking the Second Amendment and changing the rules so that no gun law can be filibustered.
Or a wave of loosened gun restrictions could come, under an all-GOP federal government, in the wake of a future massacre. (It's obvious that there will be many future massacres, and that the gun-law changes that follow them are mostly in the pro-gun direction.)
This is one more reason to go to the polls to keep the damn Republicans from taking the Senate and the White House.
5 comments:
You are right, Steve, absolutely right.
Couple of things: you got my vote in o-eight, I thought it that critical. But I have voted some combination of Green/Socialist in seven of the past eight elections and will do so again if you people run Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Rodham family is every bit the dynastic old school Robber Baron money as the Bush, the Kennedy, or the Rockefeller. I voted for change.
And two: you'll pry my guns from my cold dead hands.
No fear.
Yes, where everyday will be, "The Shoot-out at the US Corral."
After obligatory Christian prayers, of course.
". . . it won't be because America is in love with Republicans -- it'll be because of Obama fatigue or Democrat fatigue, or because the public has begun to agree with the Beltway-insider notion that voting for Hillary Clinton is voting for a tired old dynasty and a creaky old overrated woman we're all sick of. It could happen."
Yup.
Remember Bob Dole?
Capital belongs to the Capitalists
Poverty belongs to the Poor
"My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit,"said Grover Norquist. "Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything."
Of course, what Grover's obliquely let's slide by is that the Government that would exist in that scenario is one just small enough to fit in the pockets of the Plutocracy.
A-f*ckingmen!
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