The New Republic

Expanded background checks may have been defeated last month in the Senate, but one area of bipartisan gun-control consensus is gathering steam in American cities: tougher sentences, including mandatory minimums, for illegal firearm possession. READ MORE >>

Like many of us, Wayne LaPierre had no idea you could build a terror weapon out of a bit of scotch tape, a couple of rubber bands and an old pressure cooker (or was it a toaster oven?). “Well I’ll be damned,” said the head of the National Rifle Association, no doubt correctly.Wayne’s second thought came just as automatically, if not as quickly. “I wonder,” Wayne thought, “what we at the NRA are doing to protect the right of all citizens under the Second Amendment to own and use double boilers and other terror weapons?” READ MORE >>

As the Boston area was gripped by the manhunt that followed the Marathon bombings late last week, the opinion pages of the Concord Monitor just up the road in New Hampshire were consumed with another subject: Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote against legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases. READ MORE >>

I’m relatively agnostic about gun control. I’m from the West; I have friends who really like their guns. And I live in the East; I have friends who really hate guns. But it should be troubling to partisans of all stripes when terrible political analysis dictates public policy. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened with gun control. This week, the Manchin-Toomey amendment requiring background checks on gun purchases failed in the Senate, in part—perhaps in large part—because senators bought into the myth of an omnipotent National Rifle Association. READ MORE >>

For the record, I’m someone who thought gun control, while noble and important, was doomed to fail and therefore a dubious investment of presidential time. READ MORE >>

Barely had the legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases fallen short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster than the crowing started on the right. And soon afterward came the equally predictable reaction in the mainstream media and on the left: jaded fatalism. READ MORE >>

When the Senate takes up the bill to expand background checks for gun purchases this week, we will hear plenty rationalizations for opposing it similar to the one offered recently by Heidi Heitkamp, the newly elected Democrat from North Dakota: “In our part of the country, [gun control] isn’t an issue. This is a way of life. READ MORE >>

As Congress convulsed last week over a threatened—and now thwarted—filibuster to block gun-control legislation, President Barack Obama made a separate, easy-to-miss move of his own on the issue when he released his budget for 2014. There, in the section devoted to the Department of Health and Human Services, Obama called on Congress to start funding research aimed at preventing gun violence. READ MORE >>

Back in January, commentators had a good chuckle when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott posted online ads saying, “Keep your guns, come to Texas.” Subtle as a strip club flier, it was a pitch to residents of New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo had recently signed new gun-control measures into law following the Sandy Hook massacre. READ MORE >>

It wasn't so long ago that Harry Reid and Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association CEO, looked like a wizened, cordial couple as they celebrated the grand opening of a Las Vegas shooting range—the summer of 2009, in fact. But just a year later the NRA, despite its "B" rating of the Senate majority leader, declined to endorse him in a hard-fought race against Republican Sharron Angle. READ MORE >>