Posted on 12/10/2014 12:33:01 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In the wake of the Democratic Party’s second disastrous midterm election in a row, the progressive wing of the party is acknowledging that Democrats need to renew their focus on policy rather than politics.
On Wednesday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched the “Big Ideas Project,” an initiative aimed at soliciting proposals from the public. It’s not a bad idea; the president’s party needs all the help they can get.
“After being diminished in Congress, wiped out in the South, and marginalized in the states Dems focus on gun control,” wrote National Review’s Charles Cooke on Wednesday.
It’s true. “A handful of Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday they plan to push once again for universal background checks on all gun sales in the new Congress, even though they recognize it will be an uphill battle with Republicans taking majority control,” The Hill reported.
“When you don’t pass background checks, it’s just much more likely that someone will get their hands on an illegal gun and use it to kill their neighbors or their classmates,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will join the call for expanded background checks at an event on Wednesday.
The lawmakers are also pushing for legislation to keep guns out of the hands of people who have been convicted of domestic violence.
If new gun laws did not pass even in the wake of the mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut in 2012, they certainly would not pass today. Rank and file Democrats have convinced themselves that new checks on the legal ownership of firearms are a winning issue. “90 percent of Americans support background checks,” they tell themselves. Indeed, the popularity of this concept might explain why it has been federal law to impose background checks on prospective firearms purchasers since 1993.
When the Democrat-controlled Senate failed to pass even modest new gun control legislation in April of 2013, the left was shocked. They shouldn’t have been. If they had not committed to a selective reading public opinion surveys, the failure of their new gun control push would not have come as such a surprise.
While vast majorities did support new gun laws in theory following the nightmarish massacre of school children in Newtown, Connecticut in December of 2012, few regarded that initiative as a matter of urgency. Gallup surveys from that period showed that guns and gun control was the top priority of only 6 percent of the public in February of 2013, declining to just 4 percent the following month. By April, issue of guns ranked well behind the economy, unemployment, “dissatisfaction with government,” the federal debt/deficit, healthcare, and the decline of the institution of the family.
A Pew Research Center survey from January of 2013 found that, among 18 major issues facing the nation, the problem of guns in America ranked 15th.
When gun control died in the Senate, a Washington Post-ABC News poll discovered that a plurality (47 percent) was either “disappointed” or “angry” about that development. Just 39 percent described their reaction as either “very happy” or “relieved.” A parsing of that data, however, would have revealed the folly of the Democratic Party’s gun control push. While the vast majority of Democrats were disappointed by the Senate’s decision to pass on new gun laws, a majority of Republicans and a plurality of independents were not.
Even in the wake of the Sandy Hook Massacre, gun control was only ever a priority for the left. That condition has not changed and neither has the Democratic Party.
Congressional Democrats’ renewed advocacy for new gun laws may be the starkest admission yet that the president’s party is intellectually spent and focused entirely on maintaining the cohesion of its increasingly moribund electoral coalition.
This is so they can distract from the distraction from the distraction from the distraction.
They never stop looking out for us, do they?
With the surrender caucus running things, we might get gun control too
John Boehner: "Gun control is dead in our Congress, but we will pass this bill."
Every time I think (yeah, right!) these asshats have reached the height of stupidity, they raise the bar. A dumber gaggle of morons would be hard to find. I take that back. Apparently there are at least 240,000 of them in Nevada that signed the petition to “close the gun show loophole”.
Furthermore, she will assert "The best way to guarentee the Second Amendment is to pass the bill of Severe and Universal Gun Restrictions."
bump
For Christmas this year my Wife got me a Henry Repeating rifle.
This gub mint will NOT be taking it away from me, honest.
May they all be stabbed to death.
Watch them start by disarming law enforcement officers.
Now that just about every American has purchased somewhere between 3 and 27 firearms in the last six years, it seems politically inopportune to push this measure but, what the hey, no one said democrats were smart.
Never forget, the second amendment also tacitly accepts citizen militias. Like the legal profession, these militias can be self-regulating.
Well education and awareness seem to be at an all-time low, so why not.
ROFL!
man, total implosion of the left!
they are blocking freeways, rioting, messing with peoples children at Christmas shows, and now they are going for peoples guns again!
Seriously... they couldn’t be making things easier for us in 2016 if they were trying!
Too much of the citizenry just doesn't give a damn about registration and will vote for ANY bill that makes them feel "safer".
Unless the NRA, GOA and state gun organizations get cracking and head 'em off at the pass by proposing our own versions (sans Form 4473) we will soon be seeing a gif showing the growth of this pernicious scheme similar to the CCW map.
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