How, Not Whether
by tristero
We are going to have some kind of a ban on assault weapons - Obama has been as clear as he can be about that. There will be many arguments about exactly how to implement such a ban. It will be difficult to accomplish but we must remember one thing:
The debate over whether there will be a ban on automatic weapons is over.
Accordingly, this is great news:
"NBC's Meet the Press said it had invited the 31 senators, Republican and Democrat, who openly oppose stricter gun control laws to appear on the programme with Bloomberg and Feinstein. None accepted.
The National Rifle Association, the largest and most influential of the gun rights lobby groups, has been similarly silent since the massacre."
Excellent.
And for many very good reasons the anti-ban lobbyists should remain off the media. After all, they have nothing serious to contribute to the discussion of how to ban guns because they never bothered to address the possibility. Therefore, they are irrelevant to the present debate. Remember: The debate over whether there will be a ban is over. The fanatics who love the idea of making it easy for lunatics to get their hands on combat-grade weaponry lost.
Of course, the NRA, etc will be back. And they will try to deliberately roll back the question to whether guns should be banned. The best thing we can do is to put pressure both on politicians and the media to make sure the debate remains focused only on how to ban guns.
It will not be easy to convince both the media and the politicians to stay on topic in the face of the enormous pressure the extremists will bring to re-open an argument that has been settled.
Time for gun control advocates to pull out all the stops.