Greg Sargent: It's Different After Newton

     There are those who worry that this is just business as usual. The President gave a great speech at the vigil last night but he always gives great speeches. We cluck about this after the latest shoot up but within a few weeks it's forgotten about until the next community is shaken by senseless violence.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/12/president-obama-were-not-doing-enough.html

      It's certainly true that this has become a depressingly familiar drill. Yet there's good reason to think that it really is different this time. Part of it is that this is the 4th time we've had such a tragedy since the President has been in office. This is the first time we've seen children this young targeted. The idea of first graders being each shot at least 10 times with an assault weapon designed for war zones is shocking many into saying no more.

     I really don't think we're going to stand for the status quo so easily this time and as Sargent argues, the President doesn't sound like he will either:

     There was a different quality to President Obama’s response to this mass shooting, both initially and during his Sunday pilgrimage to offer comfort to the families of victims. I think I know why. It is not just that 20 young children were killed, although that would be enough.

For some months now, there have been rumblings from the administration that Obama has been unhappy with his own policy passivity in responding to the earlier mass shootings and was prepared in his second term to propose tough steps to deal with our national madness on firearms.

He spoke in Newtown in solidarity with the suffering, but pointed toward action. No, he said, we are not “doing enough to keep our children, all our children, safe.” He added: “We will have to change.”

And his initial statement Friday pointed to his exasperation. “We have been through this too many times,” he said, reciting our national litany of unspeakable events, and insisting that we will “have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-now-is-the-time-for-meaningful-gun-control/2012/12/16/ef4aa38a-47c1-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html?hpid=z4

      Sargent also says he's cautiously optimistic that the politics of "God, guns, and gays" have lost their peril for the Democrats and that more will be willing to challenge the gun lobby. What's always gone back to is 1994. Many have suggested-including Bill Clinton-was that what really hurt them in 1994 was the Brady bill. However, in this last election the NRA put all its resources behind defeating Obama and gun control Democrats and the returns were meager.

      "The prospect of political cowardice among Dems undermining the push for gun law reform at this critical juncture is dispiriting indeed. That said, it’s potentially significant that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin — a hunter and staunch “gun rights” Dem — said this morning that the time has come to act. Crucially, he suggested that assault weapons have little in common with hunting: “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip.”

      "Indeed, I’m cautiously hopeful that this time around, Democrats will overcome their typical skittishness on guns. As Nate Cohn has argued, the politics of this issue have changed: Democrats are less reliant on conservative, rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party, due to Dem gains among socially moderate suburbanites, and ongoing demographic shifts that continue to boost the vote share among minorities and young voters — all voter groups who may not see “gun rights” as a potent issue."

      "More broadly, I really wonder whether these types of cultural issues are losing their peril for Democrats. Remember, many predicted that if Obama embraced gay marriage, he risked a backlash among culturally conservative voters that could put his reelection at risk. That obviously didn’t happen — any backlash that occurred probably took place among voters he could never win over, anyway, and was more than compensated for by broader demographic shifts. If Dems have historically had to tread carefully around the conservative embrace of “God, guns, and gays,” as the famous formulation has it, perhaps two of the big “G” cultural issues are on their way toward being neutralized (God willing, of course).

That’s made more likely by the horrific nature of this particular shooting, which is the sort of event that has the emotional power to force genuine cultural shifts. If a shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children isn’t enough to induce Democrats to overcome their paralysis in the face of the gun lobby, nothing ever will.

Let me emphasize that I’m only cautiously optimistic that things will be different this time. The prospect of skittishness setting in among red state Democrats is a dynamic that needs to be watched carefully.

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/17/the-morning-plum-is-god-guns-and-gays-losing-its-peril-for-democrats/

     This could prove to be zero hour for gun control as Akin and Mourdock's comments were on abortion. What that showed was that it's possible for even red states to turn against Right wing extremism. Abortion was always supposed to be a losing issue for Dems as well, yet which party ran away from abortion and all social issues during the election? Gun control may be changing now as well and Friday may well be the catalyst Akin was on abortion.