The N.R.A. Wins Again - TheNewYorker [View all]

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THE N.R.A. WINS AGAIN
Posted by Alex Koppelman - TheNewYorker
March 20, 2013



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After Sandy Hook, after twenty children were shot and killed at a place where they should have been safe from all harm, there was some optimism among supporters of gun control: perhaps now, finally, both Democrats and Republicans could see the light—and the suffering—and revive the assault-weapons ban. It was a futile hope.

Less than a week after Adam Lanza shot up an elementary school, it was already basically clear that an assault-weapons ban could not pass Congress—that it probably couldn’t even get through the Democratic-controlled Senate, never mind the House. So it was hardly a surprise when, three months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the ban would be removed from a larger gun-control package that is making its way through the upper chamber and given a separate vote that it will not survive. The scale of the defeat suffered by the ban’s supporters, though, is shocking. This wasn’t a close call; it was a body blow.

On Tuesday, Reid told reporters that, “using the most optimistic numbers,” the ban sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California, will come to the floor with “less than forty” yes votes. If that’s true, it means that of the senators who were on the fence and might theoretically have been persuaded to support the legislation—there may have been as many as fifteen of them, and perhaps more—Feinstein and her allies lost almost every single one.

Those gun-control supporters who tend toward the glass-half-full side of things can reasonably view this as Feinstein et. al realizing that the real goal of the post-Newtown anti-gun push was a law making background checks universal—that the ban was just a sacrifice offered up to ease that law’s path through Congress—and letting any Democrats nervous about the backlash against a pro-ban vote off the hook.

There’s another way to interpret Reid’s vote count, though. Even after Tucson, and Aurora, and Sandy Hook, the N.R.A. won. Even with polls showing a majority of the country in favor of a ban and the President publicly behind it, more than a quarter of the Senate’s Democratic caucus would have voted against it, and there may not be any Senate Republicans who would have voted for it. Three months ago, there were pro-gun senators—including Reid—who were making noises about coming around on assault weapons. To a man, it appears, they have reconsidered.

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More: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/the-nra-wins-again.html