Bang. Bang. Bang.
That's the sound of Democratic Party leaders smashing their heads against the wall after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that, in light of the Tucson shooting of 20 people, including a member of his own branch of Congress, he will not be supporting any bill that would expand federal gun regulations.
The doomed fate of any gun-restriction bill is as disappointing as it is expected.
Disappointing because a recent poll shows that more Americans support increased gun restrictions, and because authorities in Tucson say the gun used in the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) – a 9-mm semi-automatic Glock with a 31-round clip – would have been illegal six years ago under President Clinton's assault weapons ban of 1994.
Expected because the power of the gun lobby in Washington, combined with historic GOP backlash against any legislation that smells of Second Amendment infringement, effectively killed any Democratic hopes of reauthorizing the ban in 2008, four years after the bill's 10-year sunset clause expired.
Faced with a Republican-controlled and Tea Party-influenced House of Representatives, Democrats have resorted to tepidly backing a Republican-proposed and severely gutted version of the 1994 bill: a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, or clips.
The argument for such a ban is simple but not overwhelmingly popular: nobody but a mass murderer hoping to gun down a parking lot full of civilians needs 31 bullets in a semi-automatic weapon for protection, Democrats say. While true, this argument hasn't convinced opponents, and it won't get legislation passed.
The Democrats' idealism is noble, and their efforts might be regarded as irreproachable if it weren't for the constraints of political pragmatism and the Speaker's perfunctory refusal to even entertain such an idea.
Rest assured, Democrats. There is another way.
When Republicans spin the rhetoric surrounding a controversial issue, it's called "framing the argument." When Democrats do it, it has no name because they don't have much of a track record of ever having effectively done it. Now is their chance.
Republicans love their country. They love their Constitution. They love their guns. And they love to entertain thoughts that one day they will be able exercise their patriotism and give their double-action Smith & Wesson some real action and defend of their homeland against Commie terrorists who want to invade their homes and burn the Stars and Stripes swaying in the Midwestern winds on their lawn.
This is fine. These beliefs are admirable. But what ever happened to excellence, discipline, and self-responsibility, the core values of American conservatism?
Republicans, of all people, should be the last to lean on the government in order to uphold a law that allows 31 rounds in the clip of a semi-automatic weapon. To rely on government bailouts for this kind of social assistance is antithetical to the most basic tenets of conservatism, and it should be utterly insulting to the true patriots of this country to ask the government to essentially subsidize – via legalization – the unskilled and un-sharp-shooting of those who claim to stand for individual liberties in the ongoing battle against socialism, treason, and terrorism.
Republicans are not lazy, deranged, sissy stoners who require 31 rounds of ammunition to protect themselves, their families, their country.
Republicans are masterful marksmen – whether in war, in politics, or in defending property lines – who can etch themselves into the history books of American Independence with a single shot (or possibly two, for those who hold the double-tap method of execution in high esteem).
It's time Republicans put an end to the excessive government handouts that serve no other purpose than to give unqualified, unskilled, undisciplined, and generally unexceptional Americans an undeserved sense of machismo. It's time they back a law that separates the boys from the men. It's time these faux Republicans MAN UP and start proving their patriotism.
(Cross-posted from Muddy Politics.)
(Cross-posted from Muddy Politics.)
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