Oh, and Extended Magazines Probably Won’t Get a Vote Either

Posted on March 20, 2013 at 8:27 am by Bob Cesca

The NRA keeps on winning, and the Democrats keep on letting them.

Left unsaid on Tuesday was that another major element of the president’s gun policy proposal could be joining the assault weapons ban in the scrap heap.

Legislation to limit the size of ammunition feeders was part of Feinstein’s bill as well. And as of now, lawmakers are expected to separate that measure from the assault weapons ban so that it can be considered individually.

But that hardly ensures that a ban on high-capacity magazines will make it through the Senate. One top Democratic aide said leadership was leaning against putting the magazine ban in the baseline bill, while another said that they would consider it as an amendment instead.

So whatever we get out of Congress will have background checks. I suppose we need 91 percent support for a gun control measure before Congress will allow it, because the majority support for extended magazine bans and assault weapons bans just isn’t good enough.

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  • GrafZeppelin127

    Honestly, I don’t think I’ve been subjected to so much hate, on HuffPo, DailyKos and elsewhere, from “liberals” and “conservatives” alike, as I’ve been on the gun issue. “Conservatives” hate me for not being so unabashedly pro-gun as to vehemently oppose any and all laws relating even peripherally to guns and gun ownership; “liberals” hate me for being either insufficiently deferential to their own ideas about “freedom” and autonomy, or for picking on the poor, defenseless, unsuspecting gun fans with generalized characterizations and cruel, unfair, malicious and hurtful thought experiments and hypothetical questions.

    I keep thinking of Linda Fiorentino’s line in Dogma, my favorite Kevin Smith film: “I’m ready to kick back, and welcome the end of existence.” Talking to “conservatives” about guns is often (not always, as not all gun fans think aloke, something I’m apparently obligated to point out any time I want to make an observation about what I’ve been hearing and reading from gun-rights advocates) a hopeless endeavour; they simply can’t get past their own judgment of their own virtue and heroism, individually or as a group. Nothing else matters; nothing else is relevant to the question of what we should do about gun violence. Any and every answer to that question that isn’t either “More guns” or “Nothing” is an affront to the personal virtue and heroism of gun owners/fans. Some gun fans won’t even talk to you unless you acknowledge, recognize and honor their virtue and heroism.

    I mentioned this recently on HuffPo and, right on cue, a couple of gun fans denied being motivated by “self-hero-worship” by, of course, pointing out how heroic they are. One wrote, “I don’t know anything about feeling heroic just because I own guns, but … [w]e are being blamed [for Newtown], and gun grabbers are trying to punish us.” Another wrote, “The rape I prevented by showing a handgun is not ‘self hero worship’ to me.” Obviously irony and un-self-awareness are entirely lost on these people.

    This topic has become so exhausting and depressing that I don’t even want to think about it anymore. The self-hero-worship of some gun fans makes me physically ill; I really do find it disgusting and nauseating. But “liberals” aren’t much better, based on the not-quite-uniquely liberal trait of going out of one’s way to be offended, viz., it doesn’t matter what you see, hear or read, what’s important is that you get offended by it and express your outrage at whoever did it, said it or wrote it. I’ve become intimately familiar with what my right-wing/GOP-fan friends and acquaintances call “liberal hate” and the “angry Left.”

    At this point I don’t even care if I get mowed down by some creep with an AR-15. I don’t wish the kind of horror, tragedy, pain and sorrow that the Newtown families experienced and continue to experience on anyone. But if in the face of that much pain and that kind of sorrow, we can’t convince enough people to even try to make something good come out of it, let alone prevent more people from suffering like that, then what are we doing here? People would rather feel like heroes than actually do something heroic?