Aug 04 Wishful Thinking

If you can’t remember the seventies, it’s hard to remember what a dismal time it was for Second Amendment rights.  Gun control was at flood tide.  There was serious talk of society-wide gun bans.  Poliiticians could seriously and openly discuss repealing the Second Amendment without fear of electoral reprisal.  Many states that’d never had problems with firearms imposed stupid gun laws to keep up with the Joneses; Minnesota, which until 1974 required no permit for the law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun, imposed a cranky “might-issue” law (and what exactly has happened to crime in Minnesota in the past 35 years?  I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…)

Starting in the late seventies, that changed.  One of the greatest grassroots political uprising in American political history turned the story around.  Within 25 years of the mid-seventies nadir, gun control was a third rail, onto which not a few Democrats electorally whizzed, to their chagrin.

And it was the National Rifle Association that was the fulcrum of this movement.  And ever since, the left has been trying to find a way to neutralize the organization.

And it’s shifting into high gear:

The National Rifle Association’s threat to punish senators who vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been met with a shrug by Democrats from conservative-leaning states and some Republicans who are breaking with their party to support her.

The gun rights group is used to getting its way by spooking lawmakers about the political consequences of defying its wishes. But it never before has weighed in on a Supreme Court confirmation battle. It was cautious about breaking that pattern, and it looks like a losing a fight to defeat President Barack Obama’s first pick for the court.

Sotomayor is expected to easily win confirmation in a vote this coming week that could deflate the long-accepted truism in Washington that you don’t cross the NRA.

It could deflate the NRA - as indeed, every crisis it’s faced in the past thirty years could have.

The thing the story’s writer misses is that the NRA’s power isn’t making sure your restaurant reservations; it happens at election time.

Cross-posted at Shot in the Dark. Comments welcome.