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I feel like there’s been poor communication on the policy side. Your idea of ‘do something’ is proposals endorsed by the NRA? That isn’t what I understood you to be advocating before. I thought your objective was to give the gun control folks and those kids in Florida something they want in order for them to stop vilifying Republicans. The minor changes you’re describing will earn no goodwill with them, and they’ll still talk about bloody hands – and maybe even hang Rubio in effigy.
I guess your real goal, although you didn’t say so explicitly, is to send a message to generally apolitical suburban moms that your side is not intransigent. If so, then that’s quite different from what I thought you were recommending. So, on the policy side, I thought that you were arguing (because some people with kooky ideas about speech policing and a surveillance state got your liver in a quiver) for capitulation, which would have been very bad politics. It seems that that was a misunderstanding.
I still think you’re advocating capitulation with regard to rhetoric, though. I’d refuse to do that – and if you’re a little creative you can use the framing conflict (ie, a problem of gun homicides vs a mass shooting problem) to disrupt the left’s solidarity. Which debate you think deserves priority is a potentially divisive matter for the liberal coalition.
PS: Every story I saw in left-wing media last night (probably not by coincidence) used the same phrase to describe the proposal Trump floated: on gun control, he may do “the bare minimum.”
What was seen as taking the issue seriously?
a) Universal background checks
b) Banning extended capacity magazines.
c) Raising the age to buy a rifle to 21.
d) Reinstating the assault weapons ban
e) Banning rifles with removable magazines
If you hoped to escape getting accused of facilitating the killing of children I think you would need to agree to something on this list or something at least in the same vein.
To do that would IMHO be a form of capitulation. Do you not think so?
Again, I’m not a gun guy- I’m definitely left of center on the issue- but purely as a political matter I’d be against even entertaining ‘a’ through ‘c’ (‘d’ seems extreme & ‘e’ is just twaddle) unless Democrats showed a willingness to entertain symmetrical concessions on their culture war focus: the life issue.