I got an email this morning from "Mayors for Gun Control" (naturally, I signed up to support them and get emails, right?). They want to push President Obama to push for more stringent gun control.
Then, there's an article out, too, from Newsweek written after last Tuesday's State of the Union speech saying that the President intentionally didn't mention gun control in the speech because, again, according to the arcticle "...aides say that in the next two weeks the administration will unveil a campaign to get Congress to toughen existing laws."
And to this I have to say "wow".
I cannot imagine a worse time or person to bring up any form of measure for our government and its laws that looks remotely like "gun control".
If President Obama a) wants to get anything accomplished, legislatively, in the next two years or b) truly wants to get re-elected, I would think he and everyone in the White House would know that he can go nowhere near anything that looks remotely like gun control.
The minute this President even suggests even weak gun control, of any kind, every NRA member, every gun owner, every Conservative and every red-necked white person with a gun is going to say "I told you so!" and go out and buy yet more guns, more ammunition, rail against the government takeover (that isn't coming, by the way, but that won't matter) and then they'll register to vote. (I recognize that some of them will, in fact, already be registered but plenty aren't, for sure).
Apparently, what they're going to ask for is not strong or stringent at all, either:
But in the next two weeks, the White House will unveil a new gun-control effort in which it will urge Congress to strengthen current laws, which now allow some mentally unstable people, such as alleged Arizona shooter Jared Loughner, to obtain certain assault weapons, in some cases without even a background check.
But nothing--I repeat, nothing--would solidify the Right-wing, Conservative, Tea Party, Libertarian and Christian militia groups more than this one man taking on anything that resembles tougher gun ownership laws.
If the Newsweek report is true, and I suspect it is, somebody in the White House must be smoking or drinking something awfully powerful, to get them to push something like this any time in the next two years, Gabrielle Giffords or no Gabrielle Giffords, Tuscon Arizona shooting or no.
My humble advice to President Obama: don't give your enemies any political ammunition like this, sir. It will bring them together as nothing else imaginable could.
It would be a gift to them that would keep on giving, right up to November, 2012.
Link: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/27/white-house-to-push-gun-control.html
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2 comments:
I think you are absolutely right that pushing gun control will be a disaster for Obama and the democrats. I don't expect anything like that from Obama until his second term, when it will merely affect the re-election prospects of Congressional Democrats, not him.
I could support strengthening mental health reporting so that people as crazy as Loughner can't buy guns legally, if the law was well-written.
The problem here is that gun control proposals have a history of deception in the fine print. The gun that Loughner carried is an example--the 1968 GCA makes the original factory version illegal to import, so minor non-functional modifications are made. This is not because the gun is too big and powerful, but because the legal definition of a Saturday Night Special is so broad that it includes most Glocks, unless the importer makes trivial modifications during import.
To get support, we would need a definition of 'too crazy to buy guns' that wasn't overly broad, a method of detection that wasn't overly intrusive, and substantial due process to prevent 'mentally ill' from being an excuse to harass ordinary gun owners. The chances of a bill like that being proposed are slim--instead I expect one that would move the burden of proof to the gun owner to prove he is sane at each purchase, a very broad definition of mentally ill, rules that will ban any hardware remotely related to what Loughner used, would ban private sales, and would increase costs to gun owners.
It is a politically very dangerous tightrope this administration would have to walk. Politically, it's crazy for them to even go near it. People will scream "gun control" and just want to shoot it down (no pun intended).
Defining "mentally ill" will be extremely difficult, just as you say, if not technically impossible. Strengthening existing laws might work, as long as it doesn't look or smell like "gun control".
It's the 2nd term or not at all, as you say, I'd think.
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