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Posted on 05/09/2009 2:01:52 PM PDT by neverdem
In politics, conventional wisdom can be slow to die, even when the so-called wisdom is neither true nor wise.
So I was reminded on a recent visit to Capitol Hill, when I asked several lawmakers and senior members of their staffs to explain the Democrats’ timidity about standing up to the National Rifle Association by pressing needed measures to curb gun violence.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama tossed cold water a few weeks back on Attorney General Eric Holder’s well-founded enthusiasm for reviving the assault weapons ban that Congress and the Bush White House let expire in 2004.
I was struck by a common thread in the responses I heard: Enactment of the original 1994 assault weapons ban cost Democrats control of Congress.
In this season of successive mass shootings, that erroneous conventional wisdom should not go unchallenged. Michael Wolkowitz, board chairman of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, calls the paralyzing myth of ’94 “the single biggest obstacle” to tightening the nation’s lax regulation of guns.
The notion that gun control was responsible for the Democrats’ debacle 15 years ago was floated by Richard Gephardt, the former Democratic House leader, and other pols and commentators after the ’94 election. But it was Bill Clinton who gave it current credence. “The N.R.A. could rightly claim to have made Gingrich the House speaker,” Mr. Clinton wrote in his 2004 autobiography, pumping up the gun lobby and, not incidentally, himself by attributing the body blow to his party to his principled leadership on guns.
It is hard to make a case that the assault weapons ban was decisive in 1994...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The problem isn't the guns ~ it's the people!
Maybe this woman needs to be introduced to Al Gore - otherwise known as Exhibit A for why it is not a wise idea for a politician to get a reputation as a gungrabber.
I really do wish the idiots would take the advice of the NYT. Call our bluff morons. Go ahead.
It is obvious that the writer wants gun control for its own sake. If an Angel from Heaven came down to tell the writer that gun control would do nothing for ‘gun violence’, she would be deterred not a whit. From her perch in Manhattan, she looks over flyover country, and sees armed citizens uncowed by the Federal Leviathan, and that makes her sad. She wants them disarmed and cowed.
Idaho: “Employer Liability Act” Signed by Governor Otter!
H.R. 2324--Aiming At Registering Gun Owners And Putting Gun Shows Out Of Business Comment# 14, MUST READ!
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Go for it! They will either fail to pass the legislation and look weak, succeed in passing the legislation and get destroyed in the next election, or succeed in passing the legislation, retain power in the next election (because the GOP may still be led by the clueless McRudy national socialist “moderates”), and BITS.
Hey Dorothy!
Molon Labe!
Every thinking state needs to do what Montana just did, to enact state legislation so that any gun and/or ammo made in that state is exempt from federal legislation.
Presented as a Public Service
Certain FReepers may need this
Click the Pic
GUILTY.
I can name a real myth in the matter, and it's one most gun control zealots have bought into hook, line, and sinker. It's that the NRA is the sole focus of the effort to maintain the basic human right of armed self-defense. That without evil NRA propaganda the 90 million gun owners in the country would see reason and accept the diminuation of this human right. The author is a fool if she thinks the Democrats can cross this minefield unscathed. Let them try it and see.
You mean "soon to be out of work morons".
It's like "Charlie Bit My Finger" on the national political stage.
Thanks for the ping!
Who would she call is she was being raped? The police.
Why? Because they have guns and can take care of the situation.
Yet leftists do not see this connection.
Idiots one and all.
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