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Strassel: The Real Gun-Control Consensus
Despite the press's best efforts to parse his statements, Harry Reid has committed himself to nothing more than a 'thoughtful debate.'
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
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The next time you hear a fellow American bemoaning the lack of Washington bipartisanship, tell him to cheer up. There is one issue on which Congress still resoundingly agrees: gun rights. Bear that in mind, too, the next time you read a story about the "new" political debate over gun control.
An almost cosmic disconnect has been building in the political sphere since the tragedy of Sandy Hook. On the one side is the gun-control community, which sniffed a rare political opening and is determined to use it to the max. Vice President
Joe Biden's gun-violence task force has given that community a vehicle for its ambitions, even as it has encouraged it to ramp up its demands.
By this week, the elites were calling for a gun-control agenda unmatched in modern times. The closing of the gun-show "loophole"? Restrictions on large-capacity clips? An "assault weapons" ban? They want all that, plus a national gun database, and a background check for every gun sale, and similar checks for ammunition sales, and regulation of Internet transactions, and
Michael Bloomberg crowned emperor. (A position for which Mr. Bloomberg no doubt believes himself suited.) The media have reported all this as rational, reasonable and doable.
On the other side is the reality that any of these proposals must, in the normal course of things, pass Congress. A few quick facts about that body. 1) More than half of its members have an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association. 2) The few members today calling for gun control are the same few who have always called for gun control. 3) The House is run by Republicans.
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Associated Press
Vice President Joe Biden, with Attorney General Eric Holder beside him.
Despite the press's exuberant efforts to cast congressional gun supporters as having changed their minds, there has been no actual movement. Senate Democrat Joe Manchin caused a media sensation when he declared, immediately after Sandy Hook, that nobody needed "30 rounds in a clip." Less reported was that it took the Democrat about the time necessary for your average West Virginian to drive to a ballot box to clarify that statement and to add that he's "so proud of the NRA." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with the press's best efforts to parse his remarks, has committed himself to nothing more than a "thoughtful debate."
Montana's Jon Tester and Max Baucus, Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas's Mark Pryor, South Dakota's Tim Johnson, Louisiana's
Mary Landrieuâ€"all are quiet on that red-state Democratic front. North Dakota's brand new senator, Heidi Heitkamp, declared proposals mulled by the Biden task force as "way in the extreme" and "not gonna pass." Unlike Mr. Obama, all of these members still face elections.
Over in the House, when asked recently what was more likelyâ€"passage of gun control or Speaker
John Boehner becoming a paganâ€"a senior GOP leadership aide told Buzzfeed: "Probably the latter."
Even were the Senate to summon 60 votes (unlikely), and even were Mr. Boehner to risk the renewed wrath of his caucus by moving such a bill (crazy unlikely), any legislation would fall to members such as Virginia's Bob Goodlatte (who runs the Judiciary Committee) and Pete Sessions (who runs the Rules Committee). Mr. Goodlatte is strong on gun rights. Mr. Sessions is from Texas.
Add to this one consequence of President Obama's intransigence on a debt solution: His other priorities are in limbo. Mr. Biden will announce his recommendations next week, just as Congress prepares to tackle the debt ceiling. At what point will Democrats have the spare bandwidth to address gun control? Also open to question is whether the White House intends to spend its political capital on that perilous subject, rather than on presidential priorities like immigration reform.
The White House is playing its usual fuzzy double-game. Does it intend to stick to mental-health recommendations and slough off on Congress any gun decisions? Or does it intend to embrace gun control in its liberal remake of the country? Was the leak that the Biden task force is debating big gun restrictions a signal of a fight to come? Or was it a deliberate head fakeâ€"to make smaller proposals look more reasonable? No one has a clue.
Whatever the White House intends, it is already in a tough position. The task-force leak, combined with Mr. Biden's tantalizing suggestion of a gun-related executive order, has seriously raised expectations. Anything less than the dismantling of the Second Amendment will earn Mr. Obama a lambasting from his left.
At the same time, the more sweeping any gun proposals, the more dead on arrival they will be in Congress. Mr. Obama might know that and be planning to take credit for going big while blaming failure on Congress. If so, he'll have to beat on his own party.
He might instead consider that gun rights are an excellentâ€"and rareâ€"example of an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have for some time been on common ground, and in which they have honestly represented their constituents. Last heard, that was exactly the sort of bipartisanship the president claimed to want more of.
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