"Hope Reese
After every lethal shooting, there's usually a conversation in Congress about enacting tougher laws, but they often fail to pass. What would it really take for this country to enact tougher national gun laws?
Robert Spitzer
We are in a situation where the NRA is thoroughly embedded in the Republican Party. The Republican Party is more conservative than it has been probably ever in its history, and is ever more loyal to kind of archconservative principles, including untrammeled access to guns. So it's not really possible to have a national debate when the leaders of the two elected branches of government don't want to talk about these things at all. Because leaders have an ability to shift the focus of debate.
So we would need to have a very different government in place. One where these issues could at least be discussed. And that's not going to happen in the near future.
I would add that at the state level, there's been a lot happening. And a fair number of states have enacted tougher laws in the last three years or so, three or four years. But more states have enacted laws to weaken their existing gun laws, so there's been a lot happening in the states.
Part of this puzzle is that the gun safety side, or gun control side, needs to continue the things it's been doing: raising more money, spending more money, making it a campaign issue, and building grassroots support to try and counterbalance the longtime dominance of the NRA. That could change things too. But these are long-term trends."
And there you have it: we need to continue the push for sensible gun control at the local level, and then spread out to the national level. We must reel in the public carry of guns, and deadly stand-your-ground vigilantism.
= new reply since forum marked as read