Over a barrel? Meet White House gun policy adviser Steve CroleyBy Jason Horowitz,
- (excerpt) ... On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack,
and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.”
Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney.
During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.
“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them.
“We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
In the meeting, she said, Obama discussed how records get into the system and what can be done about firearms retailers.
Her husband specifically brought up the proposed ban on large magazine clips,
and she noted that even former vice president Dick Cheney had suggested that some restrictions on the clips might make sense.
“He just laughed,” Sarah Brady said approvingly of the president.
Both she and her husband, she emphasized, had absolute confidence that the president was committed to regulation.
In simpler, pre-administration times, so was the president’s point man.
In Croley’s book, he argued that for all the healthy skepticism, in a complex world, regulation still amounted to “the least-worst solution to pressing social problems.”