In America, we are supposed to like constitutional rights.
One would think that an organization that vigilantly — and effectively — safeguards a constitutional right would be honored as a kind of national jewel.
Yet the National Rifle Association gets only obloquy. It is all that’s wrong with Washington, our politics, our system. It’s practically branded an accessory to murder whenever a lunatic shoots people. It’s labeled a nefarious special interest that lobbies Congress into submission.
No one can doubt the enormous clout of the NRA. But it comes about it the right way. It represents millions of members — including lots of union members and rural Democrats. Its supreme act of influence is defeating officeholders in free-and-fair elections. And its signature victory over the past two decades has been to bring about a sea change in public opinion on gun control.
The NRA won the argument. Its influence is a function of its success in the art of democratic persuasion.
How successful? In the aftermath of the Aurora massacre, with the NRA taking its usual ritualistic beating in the press, the White House scuttered away from the slightest hint of support for new gun laws. Spokesman Jay Carney averred that the administration doesn’t want new laws — it only wants to enforce the ones already on the books.
Never mind that this isn’t quite right. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder said the administration supports reinstituting the lapsed assault-weapons ban. It is, nonetheless, a sign of how far the cause of gun control has fallen.
In 1959, Gallup found that 60 percent of people supported banning handguns. Now, Gallup doesn’t even show majority support for banning assault weapons. The case for gun control collapsed on the lack of evidence for its central contention that tighter gun regulations reduce crime.
Federal gun laws are unrestrictive. Forty-one states have right-to-carry laws, up from 10 in 1987. Some 80 million people own guns, and about 8 million have conceal-and-carry permits. Yet violent crime is at 40-year lows in the U.S. If the proliferation of guns were the cause of violence, the country would look like Mogadishu.
The nation’s highest-profile champion of gun control is a mayor who presides over a metropolis where guns are all but prohibited — though hundreds of people are killed by them each year. If that hasn’t made New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stop and think, nothing will. After Aurora, he challenged President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to be as unreflective and preening as he himself is on the issue.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78991.html#ixzz21pOmtJZI