Yay!!! This story will cheer you up!

[cwmcgu2]

Just found this on CNN, this is some good news for us. However, lets not get too comfortable. We must stay diligent to maintain our rights.

Gun control unlikely to get on agenda despite shootings

By Bill Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Is the Virginia Tech tragedy likely to put gun control on the political agenda? Don't bet on it. In recent years, gun control has been an issue most politicians prefer to stay away from.

The last significant gun control measures to make it through Congress were the Brady bill in 1993 and the assault weapons ban in 1994.

And what happened? Democrats lost control of Congress for 12 years. President Clinton said the gun lobby had a lot to do with his party's defeat. Democrats have been gun-shy ever since.

Then-Vice President Al Gore rarely talked about gun control during the 2000 presidential campaign. Gore even went so far as to say he wouldn't restrict sportsmen or hunters, "None of my proposals would have any effect on hunters or sportsmen or people who use rifles."

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential candidate, went hunting during his campaign. He defended 2nd Amendment rights said during a campaign debate, saying, "I will protect the Second Amendment. I always have and I always will."

Nevertheless, the National Rifle Association ran an ad railing against Kerry and Gore's stance on gun rights. "John Kerry, you are not fooling America's gun owners," the ad stated. "They know you voted against their gun rights for 20 years. So now you're running away from your record, just like Al Gore did."

This year, former New York City mayor and current Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a longtime supporter of gun control, says the matter should be left to the states. Polls show the public supports gun control. Why don't the politicians get with the people?

Support for gun control dropping
Public support for stricter gun laws has been declining since the 1990s, according to the Gallup Poll. In January 2007, the number of people who supported stricter gun laws was at 49 percent, less than a majority for the first time since at least 1990.

Why such a decline? It seems related to the steady drop in the nation's violent crime rate since 1994. After a shocking incident like the one at Virginia Tech, public anger over gun violence rises. So does support for gun control measures.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, issued a statement saying, "I believe this will re-ignite the dormant effort to pass common-sense gun regulations in this nation.''

But public anger is not usually sustained very long, whereas gun owners remember every gun control vote as a threat to their rights. Gun owners vote the issue. Supporters of gun control typically don't. So politicians believe they will pay a price at the polls if they support new guns laws, even when most voters agree with them. When it comes to public opinion, intensity matters. Not just numbers.

 

[mons meg]

Polls show the public supports gun control. Why don't the politicians get with the people?

Public support for stricter gun laws has been declining since the 1990s, according to the Gallup Poll. In January 2007, the number of people who supported stricter gun laws was at 49 percent, less than a majority for the first time since at least 1990.

Well, which is it?

 

[El Tejon]

mons, it is whatever the media says it is. 2 + 2 = 5.

 

[30 cal slob]

1) don't get complacent politically.

2) this doesn't ameliorate in any way the pain and suffering that was inflicted on many innocent souls on 4/16/07.

 

[mons meg]

El T, I take it Mr. Senior Political Analyst didn't make the debate team in High School...

 

[Cliff47]

I would wager that the Senior Political Analyst never made it TO high school.

 

[Titan6]

Simple the majority of people who want gun control; want gun control. How hard is that?

Polls are meaningless. Even when the majority of people in NJ did not want gun control the repubs voted in some of the strongest control laws in the country. With the liberal dems in key positions now I say anything goes.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

Quote:
Polls show the public supports gun control. Why don't the politicians get with the people?

Quote:
Public support for stricter gun laws has been declining since the 1990s, according to the Gallup Poll. In January 2007, the number of people who supported stricter gun laws was at 49 percent, less than a majority for the first time since at least 1990.

Well, which is it?

Both! What they really mean to say is, "We can no longer figure out how to word the survey so that folks respond the way we want them to, but we all know that most folks want "gun control," so long as we do not define gun control and leave the definition up the person responding. Then we can fill in the definition afterwards to mean whatever we want!"

If there were any honesty amongst most journalists....

 

[TexasRifleman]

Well that all sounds nice but it's clearly wrong since McCarthy has already taken advantage of this tradgedy and introduced "high capacity" magazine legislation.

I mean, if this guy thought he would have had to reload a few extra times I'm sure he would have just stayed at home.

 

[Bubbles]

A similar article appeared in today's Washington Post. Note the parts that are bolded:

Democrats Wary Of Tightening Laws
Split With Party Conservatives Feared

By Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 18, 2007; A13


The largest mass shooting in U.S. history forced reluctant Democratic leaders in Congress yesterday to confront an issue that divides their party and holds considerable political peril: gun control.

Advocates of stricter gun laws, such as Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), met with Democratic leaders, determined to resurrect an issue that has been dormant since the shootings at Columbine High School near Denver in 1999. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) elicited a pledge from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) to hold a hearing on the shootings.

"We need to stand up and do something," said McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a gunman's rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

But Democrats on both sides of the issue were skeptical that the 33 deaths at Virginia Tech would change a political equation that has turned in the favor of gun rights advocates. Even after Columbine, no major gun-control laws passed Congress.

Since then, restrictions on guns have eased, with the 2004 expiration of President Bill Clinton's landmark assault weapons ban, passage in 2005 of legislation shielding gunmakers from lawsuits, and a 2003 measure preventing local enforcement agencies from consulting police in other states on firearms traces.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) boasts of a favorable rating from the National Rifle Association, which lobbies against gun control, and House Democratic leaders are in no rush to jeopardize conservative freshmen elected from Republican-leaning districts in Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas.

"Unless we get some leadership from the White House, we're not going to take this kind of political damage bringing up something that would never become law," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a gun-control advocate.

Such hesitation underscored how dramatically the issue of gun control has changed since the shootings at Columbine eight years ago. They drew immediate congressional reaction: Bills were introduced to bolster background checks, force the inclusion of trigger locks with gun sales, and close legal loopholes that allowed firearms to be bought from gun shows without full background checks.

But the NRA helped scuttle those measures, and some non-partisan political analysts gave the gun lobby's campaign credit for the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000.

In 2004, President Bush signaled that he would sign legislation extending a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that had passed as part of Clinton's 1994 crime bill. GOP leaders allowed the law to expire without a vote.

The lapsed gun law was back in focus yesterday, amid evidence that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui used high-capacity ammunition clips that had been banned, allowing him to fire more rounds without reloading. If Democratic leaders cannot muster the votes to reinstate the full assault weapons ban, some suggested that at least the clip-capacity portion could be passed.

"It's hard to explain why a person needs a clip with more than 10 bullets in it," said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

McCarthy said she will push even more modest legislation -- a bill to bolster the federal background-check system by funding state efforts to computerize records of mental illness and criminal convictions and to forward those records to the criminal background check system.

Still, even gun-control advocates expressed doubt that Congress would rein in the use of weapons or the ability to buy them. "Anytime an incident occurs, there's a little attention to it, and the attention dies away and nothing happens," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The gun lobby maintained a studied silence yesterday. Lobbyists for the NRA said it is taking a wait-and-see approach to possible gun-control legislation.

"Let's see how it plays out over the next week or so," a pro-gun lobbyist said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because his employer did not authorize his talking to the press. "It's hard to strategize until you know what's happening. But so far, calls for gun control have been strangely muted."

Gun-control advocates aren't done; they are simply waiting for a D or RINO to take over the White House in 2008 before making their move.

 

[Thain]

Sadly, expecting politicans to behave rationaly never works when it comes to dead children.

I realize, of course, that the 32 dead 17-30 year old college students are in the exact same age bracket as, well, me... and thus not children. But in a world where a 19 year old Crip is a innocent victim of gun violence, then true innocent collge students certainly will be.

I just wonder why no one has yet pointed out the obvious. Men and women the exact same age as the VT students die every single day in Iraq... Yet President Bush never seems to talk about the "children" that die over there...

 

[Dave Markowitz]

Gun-control advocates aren't done; they are simply waiting for a D or RINO to take over the White House in 2008 before making their move.

Of course.

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

 

[TexasRifleman]

Yet President Bush never seems to talk about the "children" that die over there...

I'll get in trouble with our students on here, and please know that I hold them in a different class than most students because of their attitudes and awareness of the world.

That said.... A 19 year old soldier fighting for his/her country are men and women, those living in the bubble of academia are children.

ETA: Grammatically incorrect but I am too tired to fix it.

 

[DC-Loudsound]

yep ...

I just wonder why no one has yet pointed out the obvious. Men and women the exact same age as the VT students die every single day in Iraq... Yet President Bush never seems to talk about the "children" that die over there...

Bush, and people like Bush are making money on the war. If not now, later.
I hate politicians. Trust none of them. :banghead:

 

[TamThompson]

What 30Cal said.

This is a fight that we can never quit fighting, because it will never be over.