Three months ago, just after 27 deaths in Newtown, Conn., we predicted there would be great sound and fury about gun control followed by little or no action.
“As we have done before,” we wrote four days after the tragedy, “people will go back to their lives and Congress will go back to wringing its hands … when its members think about the implications of offending the gun lobby.”
Well, what do you know? The sound of fury lasted about 15 weeks.
Public support is now flagging and Congress has done nothing to control the proliferation of guns. It has, however, responded quickly to three requests this year by the gun lobby to further relax gun regulations.
No kidding.
Congress acted to prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to inventory their guns annually to make sure none were lost, stolen … or sold under the table.
Congress acted to require the ATF to issue a disclaimer on any gun data warning that it “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms related crimes.”
Finally, Congress broadened the definition of antique guns for easier importation.
You see, this is why the gun lobby warns us after national gun tragedies that it is always “too soon to talk” about preventing gun violence.
They know that if they survive the initial blast of shock and dismay following a Newtown-style slaughter, any effort to change gun laws will gradually dissipate.
A poll shortly after Newtown found that 57 percent of Americans thought Congress should act on gun control. By March, that number had dropped to 47 percent.
Congress, meanwhile, has folded like a fishing worm.
President Barack Obama came up with a 36-point laundry list of ideas for curbing gun violence.
Some of the ideas were serious, like requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales including gun shows.
And some were just humorous, like the one instructing Congress to appoint an ATF director.
That job, the top job in the agency charged with enforcing gun laws, has been unfilled for six years.
Did we say six years? Yes, SIX YEARS.
NRA always says we should enforce existing gun laws. Well, by blocking every attempt to fill this job you can see how serious they are about that.
The interim ATF director also works as U.S. Attorney from Minnesota. His appointment to full-time director is pending in Congress which, at the rate Congress is going, may take six years to consider.
More than half of Obama’s gun ideas were things you would have thought somebody would already have done, like starting a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
With about 32,000 Americans dying in gun-incidents each year, and exceeding highway deaths in 10 states, someone is just now thinking about this?
Another idea, “Providing incentives for schools to hire school resource officers,” sounds a lot like the NRA’s plan to put a “good guy with a gun” in every school.
Weird how Democrats are not scoffing when Obama says it.
But the big pieces of Obama’s plan, background checks for all gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines to 10-rounds all seem doomed.
Senate President Harry Reid has already yanked the assault weapon and 10-round magazine idea from the proposed Senate bill.
Reid said it couldn’t pass. Maybe not, but he also wanted to prevent putting Democratic senators on the record voting in favor of “gun control.” That’s how deeply committed most Dems in the Senate are to this effort.
Even if the background check bill gets out of the Senate, and that’s uncertain, it likely will be dead on arrival in the Republican-led House.
And so will end any serious effort to change gun laws in this country.
The parents in Newtown will complain about their children dying in vain, and Congress will tune out one of its own members, Gabby Giffords, severely crippled by a mentally ill gunman.
Spring will be in the air, and Congressmen will be itching to recess and fire some shots of their own.
Down a lush, green fairway someplace, probably with a NRA lobbyist at their side.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
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