General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's very simple: If you want new gun control laws, you need the cooperation of legal gun owners. [View all]Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)It's easy to speculate on what might have been "if not for..."
I note that we DID have an "assault weapons ban" for 10 years, during which millions of -- voila! -- "assault weapons" were sold. You seem to think that sans GOP crazies, Democrats would have saved the day. This nation's political history has never had a party-defined clean-sweep of "actual progressives," even during FDR. In fact, what kept gun-control laws strict in the South up until the last 30 years was the entrenched presence of conservative Democrats who feared "armed Negroes." Irony of ironies.
I'll go you one better: Not only will the controllers have to deal with what you call "loony gun nuts" to get anything meaningful through Congress, the Democratic Party will have to deal with the Tea Party-types if they ever hope to (re)build the Party into a progressive force. It can be done. But many in the Party will have to junk their prejudiced regionalism, and suspicion of poor whites, as if color were a way to excuse not only culture but class warfare.
Think folks here can handle it?