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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Metacomet who wrote (211778)	12/16/2012 11:50:50 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 544003

There is a form of argument you hear from lots of folk, not just Republicans or folk who oppose addressing certain social issues. The form goes--if you can't completely solve the problem with a specific proposal, then forget the proposal. I hear that most often from Republican legislators who argue that we shouldn't drop the Bush tax cuts for income portions over $250k because that won't solve the fiscal crisis. When, of course, no one who argues for that proposal suggests it will. It's simply seen as one among many policy proposals. The argument made here that addressing the Conn shooting with specific proposals won't "solve" the gun problem in the US and will only embarrass liberals who are emotion laden rather than rational is of a piece with that reasoning. For one, we don't know enough specifics about the Conn situation to know whether some specific legislative proposal could have helped in this situation. But even if none which have even a very long shot of passing an NRA frightened legislature would pass, it's still critically important to restart the national conversation about gun safety, gun control, what have you, that the Clinton administration stopped in 1994. For those who don't watch Chris Hayes, I recommend the first half of his MSNBC program this morning, which was on this issue. Very, very informative, particularly the role of the Supreme Court decisions right now. Surely it's either on MSNBC or YouTube somewhere.