Issue

This Nemorov article brings up a good point. And I'm going to stress an unpopular aspect.

The money quote: Brady "Ignored the fact that voters didn’t consider gun control an important issue"

Gun control, for or against, is NOT an important issue.

Oh, damn sure it is to US, the millions of gunnies and libertarian types. And to the 7 dues paying members of the Brady organization and offshoots. But that's around 1% of the populace. It's just that gun control is not a priority on the big List.

That's ok. If the other side doesn't get any movement on restrictions, I think the default position of the American people is grant more liberty so even when we are not resurgent we get more gun freedoms as long as bad guys aren't succeeding. Or am I being too much an optimist?

And they don't get any traction. When something like Virgina Tech happens, the public's mood doesn't automatically return to more gun control as a solution. The calls for closing the "Gun Show Loophole" are drowned out like they weren't after Columbine. People are starting to hear instead that closing the so called loophole would not have prevented the tragedy and is very unlikely to impact future tragedies. When Ft Hood get's shot up like a year ago, the calls to ban firearms that shoot a so called cop-killer round go ignored. Like people know that the 5.7 bullet isn't magic and realize the shooter could have done as much damage with a pistol just like the duty weapons a million cops carry around. When a sick bastard goes into an Amish school to prey upon the helpless, calls for gun free school zones fall on deaf ears and people are starting to notice that gun free zones are just disarming the victims. Wider gun free zones are not clamored for. If anything the retraction of such zones gain... er... traction.

That sort of thing.

Folks are realizing it's the deadly man, not the device, maybe.

But back to the point. Gun control, for or against is not on the radar. Part of it is because the rights side's triumph aren't being trumpeted by media sources unfriendly to gun rights. Some gains are being made in traditional media sending up sympathetic offerings, but it's still a trickle. New media, like here, is ascendant, but it's nothing on the same order of magnitude for size of our voice.

More importantly, we seem to win when the Liberty issue is on the radar or not. So that's a good thing. So until a major majority starts agitating for massive rolling back to 1968 levels and then reforming the 1968 GCA and 1934 NFA to something a little more workable (we'd like to go further, but hoping for this and getting it, would still be a major win) we'll have to settle for steady pressure nibbling at the margins.