A guest post by Richie Jay
It's really depressing to write this, but the policy analyst in me thinks that even this incident won't inspire meaningful regulation of weapons of mass destruction (aka high-capacity, high-frequency guns). The NRA tomorrow will be the same strong lobby it was yesterday, just as it is after every mass murder. Our president, and Democratic legislators, will still be afraid or unwilling to take them on, even on obvious areas of broad national consensus that have no meaningful or detrimental effect on hunters and self-defense advocates. And you can forget about this swaying the Republicans in Congress: They are objectively the most radical major party in American politics in at least a century. They're not going to suddenly find moderation or become reasonable on this issue, much as they have refused to compromise, negotiate, or, frankly, even budge on just about anything else.
3 comments:
The strength of the NRA is based on their political contributions that buy them votes. The only effective way of weakening the NRA is to follow the money they donate to candidates publically. Day after Day, non-stop, perhaps virally via the internet. We cannot leave it to the media, whose interest in staying on this issue throughout the year, is highly unlikely. Unfortunately we need a person who isn't running for anything to accomplish this. A Ralph Nader of our times.
If the media would replace the word "gun" with the term weapon of death..now, when they talk about the gun lobby, it would become the weapons of death lobby, the NPA would be the national weapons of death association.
The late Sen Moynihan mused years ago, that bullets have a shelf life of about 5 years, so he proposed that instead of trying to get rid of the millions of guns, we license the sale of bullets. Let them use hand made bullets or old bullets. Watch as these defective bullets blow back into the face of the shooter. Poetic justice!
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