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Bloomberg Businessweek: Gun Control is Dead. Long Live Gun Control!

Robert Farago - comments No comments

Welcome to the Age of Miracles. The media outlet owned by the U.S. Number One Gun Grabber—Mayor Michael Bloomberg—has pronounced TOD (Time of Death) on American gun control. No really. “The inaction, especially President Barack Obama’s passivity on the topic, demonstrates that gun control has expired as a national political issue,” businessweek.com announces. “If Democrats can’t sell stiffer restrictions after a midday attack on a congresswoman, when can they?” I’m thinking never. As in never again . . .

Spookily, Assistant Managing Editor and Glock author Paul M. Barrett has the exact same problem ID’ing the trend responsible for gun control’s demise as Criminologist and UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring. Oh wait, Barrett’s story is based on Zimring’s befuddlement.

Anyway, it’s clear that Barrett and his Bloomberg BFFs are hot to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory . . .

As a component of such an anti-crime package, lawmakers could include improvements to the existing gun laws that Americans tell pollsters they support. Even the NRA agrees, for example, that guns should not be sold to people found to have serious mental problems. Yet many states fail to provide mental health records to the federal computerized background-check system. Twenty-three states have shown “major failures” in complying, according to a Nov. 15 report by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, publisher of this magazine). Four states—Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, and Rhode Island—have submitted no records at all.

Closing gaps in the background-check system would likely have only a modest effect on crime rates. But for gun control advocates struggling to stay relevant, the push for such changes represents a noteworthy shift—and a concession to reality. Having decisively lost the decades-old political and cultural argument over whether Americans should have the right to pack heat, they need to adapt to meet the demands of a public that wants to reduce the number of crimes—not the number of guns.

Adapt or die? When it comes to gun control, I’m going with die. As soon as possible please.

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