Yet again
I’ll keep this short. Not every post will be spent bashing Republicans, bashable though they are. But when it comes to gun massacres and their slavish fealty to the NRA, what else is there to say.
In the aftermath of these horrors, we always get the same parade of inanities.
Mitt Romney really outdid himself on that front this evening:
Fun fact about Mitt - he laps the field among his Senate colleagues when it comes to receiving NRA money. This, from the Brady Campaign, is from a couple of years ago, but the point stands. He’d received twice as much in donations as the Senator who ranked second, outgoing NC Republican Richard Burr. Since this is a family show, I’ll refrain from being graphic about where Mitt might stick his “prayer and condolence.”
Texas governor Greg Abbott has been providing briefings this evening about the massacre. That same Greg Abbott is also a proud NRA devotee. Last year, he crowed about signing into law several new measures that continue the dismantling of *any* gun safety measures in Texas.
Among the measures he touted was a provision reversing a ban on silencers - freaking silencers - including blocking federal attempts to punish those who manufacturer them. No doubt, our founding fathers would be proud of this prudent and just interpretation of the constitution.
Ted Cruz, not surprisingly, trotted out the usual despicable Texas two-step of both decrying attempts to “politicize” the gun issue in the immediate aftermath of another massacre while at the same time politicizing that very issue.
He told a pool of reporters tonight: “Inevitably when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens.”
There are significant partisan differences about gun safety measures. But on some issues, including preventing people with mental illness from buying guns and requiring background checks, there is overwhelming support across the political spectrum. On other issues, like banning assault-style weapons, Republican voters notwithstanding, large majorities of Americans favor such measures.
None of it matters though because of a combination of the filibuster, the fact that the Senate over-represents Republicans and that GOP elites are in absolute lockstep with NRA extremism.
Blue states can try to pass all the gun laws they want. But in the absence of a coordinated national effort, of the sort that have proved *highly* effective in other countries, nothing change. The GOP is dead set on that.