WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WILL IT FUCKING TAKE TO FUCKING END THIS FUCKING SHIT?

[gratuitous]

32. It's going to have to cost the bought-and-paid-for NRA politicians

When they start losing their campaigns for re-election, and their advisors tell them it's because of their laissez-faire attitude to regulating firearms, change might start taking shape.

As it is, there are millions of voters out there whose single issue is free and unfettered access to firearms. And they vote. Every election, every time. They vote out the gun grabbers. They vote out the reasonable centrists. If there's a choice between a blood-gargling psychopath and a squish, they'll vote for the psychopath every time. Look at the Republican primaries: NOBODY in any of those races gives the voters anything beyond full-throated endorsement of firearms and their miraculous ability redeem any situation, solve any problem.

When those guys start losing, something might change. Do we have our people's backs when it comes to firearm regulation? Our candidates don't think so: Listen to them talk firearms after something like this. They always - ALWAYS - have to make an obeisance to the NRA and its murderous policies, to be sure that the worst excesses of the proliferation of firearms continue. Our candidates aren't dummies. We have to prove to them that firearm regulation is not just good policy, but winning policy.

I don't want to hear mealy-mouthed nonsense about hunting rifles or whatever. But until Democrats talk a good game and deliver a better one for firearm regulation, they'll do that only when we back them to the hilt and deliver the message to the NRA that we aren't going to be held hostage by them anymore.

We're going to lose elections pursuing this goal. We're going to have Supreme Court decisions go against us. And we're going to have to slog on, impervious to defeat. As the forced birth people showed, nothing is permanently decided. We lose only when we give up, not when we lose an election.