Darkman00
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March 20, 2013
The N.R.A. Wins Again
Posted by Alex Koppelman
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.
The N.R.A. Wins Again
Posted by Alex Koppelman
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.
