"National Gun Fever Shows No Sign Of Breaking"

[applegrove]

National Gun Fever Shows No Sign Of Breaking

by Cynthia Tucker at the National Memo

http://www.nationalmemo.com/?author_name=cynthiatucker

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Democrats have cowered before the gun lobby; the National Rifle Association has grown even more extreme; the U.S. Supreme Court has moved much further to the right. And, in the 20 years since Congress banned assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines, Americans have heard a steady drumbeat of pro-firearms rhetoric that fetishizes the Second Amendment. In other words, the climate around firearms has gotten crazier.

Even before the current debate over more restrictive gun laws began, most political observers knew it would be difficult to get Congress to stand up to the firearms lobby. So it’s no great surprise that Majority Leader Harry Reid, who runs from the shadow of the National Rifle Association, slammed the door on Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s effort to re-up the assault-weapons ban.

Still, I find myself once again wondering just how bad things have to get before the fever breaks — before the country comes to its senses on firearms. We’re in the throes of a kind of madness, a mass delusion that assigns to firearms the significance of religious totems.

Many critics of an assault-weapons ban note that it would not provide any magical cure-all for the mass shootings that have plagued us over the years since Columbine. That’s certainly true. But banning at least some assault-type weapons and the high-capacity magazines that feed them would be a step in the right direction. Why can’t we take that step?

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[socialindependocrat]

1. It's like banning large soft drinks to stop obesity....

It's a step in the right direction.

If you got to the point where 95% of society was healthy
you would still need to find a way to stop that last 5%
from stuffing their faces...

It's a tough problem but that last 5% are the problem.

[Dawson Leery]

2. kick

[applegrove]

3. 10...9...8...7...6...5... (the NRA will be here to deny any second) 4...3...

[villager]

4. Part of the mean-edged, bullying culture that's been so internalized these past 30 years....

With people so skillfully traduced into fetishizing guns, they don't even question their programming anymore...

[coldmountain]

5. The gun culture is a big contributor to the bullying culture

[villager]

6. And vice-versa as well, one would think.

But yes -- part and parcel, for each!

[GoldenEagle16]

7. The proposed AWB will perpetuate the present number of mass shootings

because it does not take a single assault weapon out of circulation.

The logic is simple: X number of guns produces Y number of mass shootings. It is good that X is not getting larger but it is unacceptable that X is not getting smaller.

The AWB has to be the first step towards a real ban. A buy back or confiscation - I don't care.