A friend sent me Gabby Gifford's passionate New York Times op-ed, "A Senate in the Gun Lobby's Grip'" to which I replied with the following responses:
I'm afraid we disagree on this issue.
Charles Krauthammer writes: (video available)
Charles Krauthammer objected to the Democrats’ perpetual invocation of the children murdered in Newtown throughout the debate over gun-control, calling it “emotional blackmail.”
“If you’re going to make all of these emotional appeals,” he said, “you’ve gotta show that if this had been law, it would have stopped Newtown. It would not have. It’s irrelevant. I wouldn’t have objected, I might’ve gone the way of McCain or Toomey on this, but it’s emotional blackmail to say ‘You have to do it for the children.’ Not if there’s no logic in this, and that I think is what’s wrong with the demagoguery that we’ve heard out of the president on this issue.”
-- Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most astute commentators I know, says:
It is a bad idea to demonize your opponents with epithets such “shameful” and “lying,” given that the case was not made that proposed gun-control legislation would have prevented a Sandy Hook. To prevent these school-shooting horrors might require either armed guards in schools, or Draconian new laws about gratuitous screen and video-game violence, or more frequently incarcerating the mentally unstable, or, on the theory of reducing rapid rates of fire, confiscating millions of previously sold semi-automatic handguns and rifles. All those measures would have offended millions across the political spectrum in ways that demonizing the NRA apparently does not. In the end, it was not the “lying” “gun lobby” that persuaded enough senators to defeat the bill, but the president’s inability to make the argument that his proposals would help stop another Sandy Hook or Columbine. . . .
- A particularly useful, dispassionate analysis can be found in this Wall Street Journal article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578430672176449846.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
- Not directly relevant to the vote on gun control is an interesting chart showing more Americans think guns make home safer.