Despite the press's best efforts to parse his statements, Harry Reid has committed himself to nothing more than a 'thoughtful debate.'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 21032.html
Encouraging, if it is true.The next time you hear a fellow American bemoaning the lack of Washington bipartisanship, tell him to cheer up. There is one issue on which Congress still resoundingly agrees: gun rights. Bear that in mind, too, the next time you read a story about the "new" political debate over gun control.
An almost cosmic disconnect has been building in the political sphere since the tragedy of Sandy Hook. On the one side is the gun-control community, which sniffed a rare political opening and is determined to use it to the max. Vice President Joe Biden's gun-violence task force has given that community a vehicle for its ambitions, even as it has encouraged it to ramp up its demands.
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On the other side is the reality that any of these proposals must, in the normal course of things, pass Congress. A few quick facts about that body. 1) More than half of its members have an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association. 2) The few members today calling for gun control are the same few who have always called for gun control. 3) The House is run by Republicans.
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Montana's Jon Tester and Max Baucus, Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas's Mark Pryor, South Dakota's Tim Johnson, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu—all are quiet on that red-state Democratic front. North Dakota's brand new senator, Heidi Heitkamp, declared proposals mulled by the Biden task force as "way in the extreme" and "not gonna pass." Unlike Mr. Obama, all of these members still face elections.
Over in the House, when asked recently what was more likely—passage of gun control or Speaker John Boehner becoming a pagan—a senior GOP leadership aide told Buzzfeed: "Probably the latter."
