Why Didn’t Democrats Pass Gun Control When They Controlled Congress In Obama’s First Term?

A filibuster-proof majority is a precious thing. Republicans have never had one, ever, but Democrats enjoyed one less than a decade ago. It bears remembering that, as the horror in Parkland yesterday has made this a week in which not one but two Democratic legislative priorities are on the table in which liberal self-righteousness is conspicuous, even by their usual obnoxious standards. Issue one: Immigration. They want a mass amnesty of DREAMers and they’re not willing to give up much to get it because, they reason, they shouldn’t need to. Amnesty is a virtue in itself! We shouldn’t need to bargain over it. (Unlike enforcement, that is.)

Issue two: Gun control. David French lamented this morning on Twitter that it’s impossible to have a useful conversation about mass shootings until the left believes that the right wants to stop mass shootings too. But I tweeted back at him that that’s impossible; their worldview rests on the belief that the right operates in bad faith in all things. Social media is brimming with “the blood is on your hands” arguments today aimed at gun-rights supporters. It’s a national crisis, we’re told, and the callous Republicans do nothing.

Which raises the obvious question. Given the moral urgency of both problems, why didn’t St. Barack and his caucus of innocents in Congress do anything to solve them when they had the power to do so? They could have passed amnesty. They could have banned, ahem, “assault weapons.” They didn’t. Why?

Idea: Make an argument for a specific laws that would prevent massacres instead of calling people cowards. https://t.co/CdEofbmo1i

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) February 15, 2018

Political cowardice involves failing to act on what you believe is right because of political concerns.

An example of that is the decision among Democrats to hold no votes on gun control between 2009 and 2011 when they had huge majorities in Congress and held the White House.

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) February 15, 2018

They didn’t ban them because they cared more about getting elected than they did about these supposed national emergencies. The Virginia Tech massacre was just two years old when Democrats assumed power in 2009, which also happened to be the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. Rampage killings at American schools were very much on the national radar. But Democrats had a problem: Having inflamed right-wingers by passing a massive stimulus shortly after Obama was sworn in and then driven the right crazy by ramming ObamaCare through, they worried that pushing any more big-ticket Democratic priorities would cost them control of Congress in the midterms. I remember them in early 2010 trying to talk themselves into believing that the poor polling for O-Care would turn around as voters got to know the new law better and that a midterm rout would be averted. But they were never sure enough of that to go all-in on gun control and amnesty too. They knew that, to maintain a sizable congressional majority, they’d need their red-state Democrats to get re-elected, and two major pieces of liberal legislation on top of the stimulus and ObamaCare was simply too much.

So, faced with the choice of using their power to impose their will on policy and letting the chips fall where they may in the midterms or playing it safe in hopes of preventing an electoral slaughter in red states, they chose to play it safe. They got slaughtered anyway. And you know what? They probably would do it again right now, given the tenuous position red-state Dems like McCaskill, Tester, Donnelly et al. are in this fall. Something to keep in mind as fingers are being wagged in your face about how little you care about DREAMers and schoolkids. Democrats only care when it’s electorally convenient.

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