Reply #15: If you tire of this issue, if you think it is overwrought, then "Out! Damned spot!"

[SteveM]

One cannot simultaneously say the issue is "dead," "inconsequential," "Obama's not going to take your guns away," or "it's a wedge issue which has no other purpose," and maintain that issue, percolating as it were on the back burner.

Rid the party of this issue. You cannot have it both ways.

If you wish to pursue gun-control, do so as a pressure group (as the GOP-founded, GOP-led does) Brady Center. Or lobby your representative. But the Democratic Party should drop its CONTINUED advocacy of an expanded and permanent "assault weapons ban," and similar such stuff, or continue to face the far superior forces which keep some millions of people from voting Democratic.

Challenge to the gun-controllers: Find a Democratic Party Platform which advocates for gun-control, or even MENTIONS gun policy, before the Zombies recorded "She's Not There" (1965?).