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Posted on 11/05/2001 9:47:37 AM PST by C0y0Te

"I think all women oughta carry a cell phone and a three-fifty-seven. Loaded." So declares a woman interviewed by The New Republic's Michelle Cottle. That statement seems to sum up the post-Sept. 11 attitude toward gun control. Things were already tough for the gun-control movement. Convinced that Al Gore's strong anti-gun stance had cost the Democratic Party the 2000 election, the Democratic Leadership Council had already called for a softer line on gun control. Bill Clinton and former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart had pronounced Gore's stance a mistake. Meanwhile, product-liability suits brought against gun manufacturers were failing miserably in courts from New York to California. These, however, were all tactical defeats. The gun-control movement could still boast the loyalty of most of the media; favorable treatment from the courts on Second Amendment cases; the strong support of women; and a new book by a celebrated historian that claimed guns weren't important to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Most important of all, the movement resonated with the Rosie O' Donnell culture of "niceness" that assumed that the best way to avoid harm was to be harmless. But now all of this has changed. Though gun-control groups have tried to capitalize on the Sept. 11 attacks, those attempts have misfired. Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center tried to claim that Barrett Firearms had sold .50 caliber sniper rifles to Usama bin Laden. Not many in the media bought this, which was a good thing since it turned out that those rifles had actually been sold to the United States Government. Even lamer was the claim that the Sept. 11 attacks were an argument for closing the (nonexistent) "gun show loophole." This claim, made first in a Brady Campaign press release and then in a suspiciously similar op-ed bearing the byline of former Clinton Administration official Eric Holder, just plain flopped. Nobody could be persuaded that Usama bin Laden

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