This time the White House is beating down Hillary’s suggestion that we need to renew the ban.
After meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, Clinton said that reinstating the U.S. ban on assault weapons—which was passed in 1994 and expired in 2004—is one step this country could take to curb the flow of guns to Mexico’s drug cartels. “These military-style weapons don’t belong on anybody’s street,” Clinton told NBC. Within hours, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that he was unaware of “any plans” to push for such a ban—even though Obama had backed one during last year’s campaign.
I think the problem the Democrats are facing is that they’ve been used to being able to sing platitudes about banning assault weapons with little or no consequence. Now every time someone well placed in the Administration opens their yap about assault weapons, Bushmaster gets another couple of months of backorder, and NRA no doubt signs up a lot of new members. That has to scare the hell out of the White House.
Because of efforts in Congress, it’s unlikely a ban is going to end up passed this Congress, but we still have a lot of work. We need to work on two fronts. One on the political front, to ensure that in 2010, we cut the Democrats numbers, and two, on the shooting front, that all these people buying AR-15s, and many of them will be new buyers, get it out to the range to shoot it. It would be great if we could turn the surge in sales into hundreds of new high-power shooters.
[and two, on the shooting front, that all these people buying AR-15s, and many of them will be new buyers, get it out to the range to shoot it.]
That would be a great thing – if you can find enough ammo to support shooting the rifle.
These new shooters generally aren’t thinking about reloading. Heck, these folks buy a $1000 – $1500 rifle that comes with 2 mags – if you’re lucky – and then buy 3 boxes of ammo. I try to explain to them that they’ve just purchased enough ammo to fill 2 mags once, but they don’t actually plan on shooting the rifle and learning how to properly handle it. They look at the cost of 1000 rounds – if it’s in stock – and decide that it’s too much money.
Yeah, that’s a good point, Skullz. Ammo costs are killing even experienced shooters. That’s one reason I’m shooting a lot of air gun.
Hey, we don’t have to turn them into high-power shooters. We could turn them into 3-gun shooters!
“We need to work on two fronts. One on the political front, to ensure that in 2010, we cut the Democrats numbers…”
The whole Dem/Repub thing doesn’t bother me much. It is the anti-gun Dems I want voted out, along with any anti-gun Repubs that may agree with them. If we could get both parties to push pro-gun legislation, that would be great (although I am always told that ALL Democrats want to ban guns and ALL Republicans are pro-gun).
Think about the recent letters to repeal the surplus brass ban, who wrote those?
You’re right about that Jim. I should have been more clear.
When I take a new shooter, I take an AR, a few 22s, a hundred 223, and a few bricks of 22. I teach slow, aimed fire on the 22s until just before they get bored and then we move to the AR. They take the slow aimed fire to the AR platform and it really makes the ammo seem like much more than 2 and a partial mag’s worth. If you use 20 round mags, that’s 5 reloads as well. That makes it seem like there is more ammo than there really is.
Practice and teach on the 22, finish on the AR. The guest will have alot of fun and think he shot much more than he really did.
Well this is amusing because of an old saying:
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand….”(Matthew 12:25”)
I am finding that there is lot of infighting or separation with the Obama administration about their agenda. Its either one of two things:
1. Holder and Clinton are speaking honestly about what they are talking about with the President and his ultimate agenda.
2. Administration personnel are pursuing their own agendas outside of coordination with the White House.
Either way, this is a terrible embarrassment for the administration and portrays them as either against guns, and remarkably amateurish concerning the issue of politics. Friggin’ Beautiful!
I wouldn’t expect any real work on AWB v2 this year. Any politico of any note whatsoever has figured out that the Dems and the administration is burning political capital by the shipload with the economy, stimulus and anything related (like AIG bonuses, etc) that they can’t afford the fight of AWB v2.
Various states (NJ, CA, the usual suspects) might want to push it locally, however, and there’s nothing to prevent that.
Of course, it’s up to us to prevent things that create public support for a ban, like nursing home shootings, etc. Support mental health efforts, encourage the depressed to seek help, be wary of your local psychopath.
ATL, I suspect it’s a little bit of both, and some other factors. It seems that all of these questions are coming from either Mexican officials or Mexican journalists. It may be on their agenda, but not on American agendas. Technically, both Hillary & Holder have done a good job at representing the Administration’s point-of-view on the issue. They were accurate. It’s just that Obama doesn’t want to fight this battle right now – or possibly at all during his term if the financial stuff keeps eating away at all of his other domestic priorities.
But, what else are cabinet members going to say when they are being directly asked about the specific legislation by these journalists and leaders? They should be saying something along the lines of, “Such laws would have to come from Congress, and we’re unaware of any legislation that would reinstate the ban at this time. Given the lack of Congressional action on that particular matter, we in the Administration are doing X, Y, and Z. Here are our priorities…” You get the point. Whether they aren’t spinning the questions on purpose or because they just didn’t think about it is up in the air. It’s not hard to imagine that Hillary’s motivation might be the former, while Holder’s might be the latter. ;)
I wouldn’t say it isn’t on their agenda, more like it is and they are just waiting for an opportune time to launch. They don’t want to come out when they have people unconcerned with gun control and more worried about the economy.
Wait for things to calm down some on the economy and have a good mass gun crime and you’ll see them charging the ramparts with new restrictions.
If they can’t get the prime political environment, they won’t even play that ball. They may not be the smartest, but they have been burnt sufficiently to know they can be hurt again.
Of course it is on their agenda. The President has spent the entirety of his public and private adult career supporting anti gun initiatives. The Vice President has introduced an AWB as recently as 2007. The Secretary of State and Attorney General are both ardent proponents of an AWB and many other firearm/ammo restrictions.
The media blitz over the past 6 months or so over all the supposed American guns making their way into Mexican Gangbanger hands has been a well orchestrated publicity stunt. The purpose behind all this media coverage that plays fast and loose with the facts is to soften up public and garner acceptance to more restrictive gun control laws that include an AWB and an end to private sales of firearms.
It seems that they are quite surprised that it is not working our as well as they would have liked.
I snicker when I see stuff like this. Between Holder’s backpedaling and this comment from Clinton, it shows just how divided the Democrats are on the issue of gun control. In addition, forget the rest of the party, IMHO it’s making Obama’s administration look really bad that they can’t agree amongst themselves and provide a unified stance. Proves that we once again have an administration where the President doesn’t seem to be in control.