Opinion: NRA Safeguards Constitutional Right

Rich Lowry
Politico

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


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