Slate's Bruce Reed, surveying the reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre, can't help noticing the elephant in the room. Why, he asks, are opinion-formers shying away from thinking about tightening the gun laws?
Across the political spectrum, commentators reached the same conclusion. Whatever they think ought to be done to prevent future tragedies, they're unanimous on one point: We're not going to do it. Even in the ivory towers, where the laws of political gravity don't apply, the dreamers were silent. For its online feature, Think Tank Town, the Washington Post asked a variety of scholars, "How can policies be improved in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings?" All the posts had more or less the same headlines: "The Real Problem Transcends Policy," "Gun Control Doesn't Fit This Crime," "Not Every Tragedy Has a Solution," "Evil Is Always With Us."
...Granted, most of the scholars in the Post survey come from centre-rght think tanks and have ideological biases toward doing nothing. But they're not the only ones the Post asked. The centre-left think tanks on the Post's list — like Brookings and the Centre for American Progress —didn't even bother to show up. Those of us who work in think-tanks are supposed to come up with ideas with little or no chance of passage. Yet in this age of policy ennui, even people who get paid to be hopelessly unrealistic can't suspend disbelief on guns.
Democrats run away from the issue because they're convinced it's electoral suicide. Reed isn't so sure about that:
Voters aren't the obstacle to banning high-capacity clips or closing the gun-show loophole; they support those measures by broad margins. The real hurdle is finding leaders who are willing to get tough on crime, no matter where they find it—and who have the standing to prove they know the difference between hunters and criminals. Bill Clinton wasn't a lifelong hunter, like Mitt Romney. He didn't need to be. He was a Bubba. In recent years, Democrats have suffered a Bubba shortage. But Democratic Bubbas are making a comeback in the South, Midwest, and West. As they gain confidence, they will realize, as Clinton did, that real Bubbas look to cops for approval, not the NRA.
[Via RealClearPolitics]
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