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Robert Shrum speaks frankly about Gun Control
He hits the nail on the head.. A few excerpts...
The stark reality is that the half-century battle for gun control has been lost politically—again, and again, now perhaps permanently
Then came an apparent breakthrough in 1994—and an intense and immediate backlash. I was on a phone call with President Clinton, House Speaker Tom Foley, and Majority Leader Dick Gephardt during which the president decided to push ahead with two bills: a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, and the Brady Bill to require a five-day waiting period and a background check for handgun sales. Foley and Gephardt warned that the legislation could decimate Democrats in the midterm elections. They were right. Democrats lost the House; Foley, who enraged his rural constituents by voting for the Clinton package, lost his own seat.
You can debate the reasons for the change in public opinion; remember though, that those who favored modestly tougher restrictions paid a political price even when they apparently were on the safe side of the electorate. Advocates of gun control plainly aren’t there now.
.....and even many Democrats. And many others who in their hearts may favor gun control now treat it as the issue that dares not speak its name. They’re not cynical, they’re practical. They believe, correctly, that they can’t bend the arc of public opinion—and if they try, they will jeopardize not only the winning of elections, but the prospects for winning other great purposes such as economic justice and equal rights. This is more than a rationalization. It is an inescapable fact of politics today.
He understands what the push for gun control, can cost us in the long run.. People must realize that the battle for gun control, has bled many Democrat seats, and cost us dearly in our pushes for Health Care, and getting rid of the Bush tax cuts. Those that lost their seats because of gun control, now have Rupukes in them instead.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/24/for-obama-romney-and-america-gun-control-is-dead.html
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