What's to stop another "Columbine" from happening at a very convenient time (and being hyped to high heaven by the 'Rat dominated media)? The Ugly Gun ban? Bwahahahahaha!!! ;'}
Why is this your make-or-break issue?
Good question.
Short answer: Because there's absolutely no excuse for its renewal to even be voted on by a subcommittee much less actually be passed by a Republican controlled congress.
Slightly longer answer: I have been a hard-core RKBA activist (off and on) for nigh unto twenty years. There is a plethora of blatantly unconstitutional anti-gun laws, dating to the late 1800s. I have seen that plethora grow in spite of my efforts to reverse it; the only real improvement has been the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry laws passed by many states. During this time, I have heard endless excuses from Republican Party apologists as to why we can't get anything repealed or reversed. The Republican Congress, they say, can't get anythign done with a Democrat President. The Republican President, they say, can't get anything done with a Democrat Congress. How this explains Bush41's ban-by-executive-fiat (BATF reinterpretation of GCA '68) of imported Ugly Guns eludes me.
Well, now, it's the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Three. By the Grace of God (so they tell me) we have a Republican President, a Republican controlled House of Representatives, and even a Republican controlled Senate. That Republican President, while still a candidate, promised to sign a renewal of the 1994 Ugly Gun ban. He was, so they tell me, triangulating; trying to win the votes of the whining leftists but also telling the Republican controlled Congress not to put an UG ban on his desk in the first place. If that's the case, that Republican controlled Congress had bloody well better not pass an UG ban. Here's the kicker: we're not asking the Congress to actually repeal anything. If the Congress does precisely nothing, in September 2004 the Ugly Gun ban ends. Poof. Gone. In 1994, the Congress put a 10 year poison pill in the Ugly Gun ban, and even so it just barely passed a Democrat controlled House. Asking the Congress to do nothing is not asking them to display any particular courage. So if the Congress passes an extension of the Ugly Gun ban, and the President signs it into law, I will know that they have deliberately, willfully, and with malice aforethought, stabbed me in the back. Any attempt by the Republican Party apologists to minimize or explain away such betrayal will, along with their previous two decades of excuses, be revealed as of no more value than the gibbering of baboons. So that's why it's a make or break issue for me. I don't vote to reelect traitors and back-stabbers.