Democrats Bitterly Clinging to Gun Control
You’d think that after losing control of the House and Senate, Democrats would play a strategy in the 114th Congress that wouldn’t alienate them from the rest of the country. But led by lawmakers from Connecticut, the Left will fight the Republican majority to enact more gun control, specifically already-legislated universal background checks. “When you don’t pass background checks,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) lectured, “it’s just much more likely that someone will get their hands on an illegal gun and use it to kill their neighbors or their classmates.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal joined his fellow Connecticut senator when he said, “Congress’s failure to act makes it, in fact, an aider and abettor to those deaths that could be prevented.” Wrong. As gun journalist Charles Cooke notes, a law enacting universal background checks will not prevent another Newtown massacre because the shooter stole the guns from his mother. In other shootings, the perpetrators bought guns legally, passing background checks. The Left’s gun control goal comes at a time when 52% of Americans say the right to bear arms is more important than controlling guns in a feeble attempt to reduce crime – the most support the Second Amendment has gotten in 20 years.