What's the Aim
Stepping into The Crosshairs?
This week, the Senate will take up the first major firearms legislation since the Assault Weapons Ban expired. In light of the Newton, Connecticut, school shooting, Congressional Democrats and the President see an opportunity to tap public outrage at the current policy.
I insist that Newtown was merely the last straw in a string of shootings that started in Tuscon, and continued through Fort Hood, Aurora, Wisconsin and finally Newton. But there were more than mass shootings, incidents like Trayvon Martin, and the murder-suicide in Kansas City also put America's firearms policy under fire. As well as the group behind so much those policies, the National Rifle Association. Their response and rhetoric has showed them to be out of touch with much of mainstream America.
But the NRA still has political clout, as was shown by the fact that many of the provisions that they found toxic to the manufacturers and insurgents they rely on. There will be no Assault Weapons ban and no limits on magazine size.
More than a few on the side of gun safety and sanity, like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, saw this decision as a sell-out to the NRA. I think it was a case more of taking what you can get and taking baby steps. Also, some of the ideas that were rejected may show up as amendments.
Even as amendments, the bill will still show what the purpose may be, to show that the absolutists of the NRA have too much power and that working to vote NRA hired guns out of office is the only way to see America's firearms laws be more like those of a First World country.