Gun Control: The Most Harrowing Debate of the New Year

Posted on December 31, 2012 at 7:18 am by Bob Cesca

My last column of 2012…

Based on various observations over the holiday season, it’s becoming increasingly clear that new gun control legislation will be the biggest political fight of 2013, perhaps on par with the ongoing negotiations on the deficit and debt.

Yes, I know. It’s difficult to believe considering the shocking obscenity of Sandy Hook, but as the trauma wears off and with the holidays providing a cooling-off period, the Republicans will probably ease back into their mutually-masturbatory relationship with the NRA and resist new legislation against assault rifles and extended ammunition magazines. And those last two things are part of the problem. It appears as if the Democrats are predictably opening the fight with an already compromised position: basically more of the same gun control legislation that barely seems to stick to the wall.

While the Republicans are leading with supremely radical ideas for mitigating gun massacres in schools alone (they’re occurring in more places than just schools, by the way), the Democrats ought to be taking a similarly tough opening position. [continue reading]

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  • mattpd03

    Happy New Year Bob! You did a lot of really great writing this year. Thanks!

  • trgahan

    As long as the current President, by his mere physical being, embodies everything the pro-gun lobby/conservatives see as evidence of America being lost and “the other” rising to take tyrannical control over “real Americans,” there will be no substantive changes in gun laws.

    • farmrdave

      There will be no changes to Americans gun laws. If the government writes laws contrary to our constitution and we allow them to stand there is no longer a free America.

      • trgahan

        Thank you for proving my point, now run along little child the adults are talking.

  • muselet

    As long as a noisy, paranoid minority equates gun control with ZOMG they’s comin’ to take ma gunz!!!11!!—read the letters to the editor in just about any newspaper in the country for daily examples—nothing will get done. And of course the GOP and NRA are cheerfully stirring up that minority for exactly that reason.

    I understand why the NRA does so: if they can frighten the public, firearms sales will go up. I do not understand why the GOP—I’m talking about the Republican Party as a whole, not its more unhinged members—does, and I don’t really care.

    As Kevin Drum said, If You Want to Regulate Guns, Talk About Guns. Period.

    –alopecia

    EDITED because tagfail. I’m so embarrassed.

  • D_C_Wilson

    If anything, the debate over gun control is going to be even more acrimonious than the debate over health care reform. The teabaggers opposed health care reform because they feared that some lazy welfare queen would get a boob job and her fourth abortion on their dime (also because “the president is ni-KLANG!”). But even suggesting that they may be slightly inconvenienced when purchasing their latest small penis-compensation toy, well, that’s just getting personal.

  • farmrdave

    Your claim about debating gun control I am sure will top the list of many headlines. Repeating it often will not make it true. What is at stake here are our fundamental rights guaranteed by Constitutional law.
    Congressional oath of office; “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God”.
    I think most congressmen take this seriously and are not willing to jump onto your sinking ship of anti freedom propaganda.