The Senate is set to vote today on an amendment to the defense authorization bill by Sen. John Thune (R-SD) requiring reciprocity among the states for concealed carry weapons permits issued in other sister states.
However you view the substance of the amendment, Roll Call ($) got right to the real crux of things with this headline:
Senate Democrats Once Again Vexed by Guns
That's the heart of the matter for me. I can understand and even sympathize with the movement of Democrats towards a more gun-friendly position as a party, especially as they welcome more Mountain and Western Dems into the fold. Being more open to common sense gun law reforms is arguably an important part of the formula that puts the Democratic Party on the rise while Republicans collapse under the weight of their slavish devotion to insane wingnut paranoia and the generalized rejection of science and reason.
The problem is that even as they do collapse, Republicans are making a real habit of bringing gun riders to the floor, both in the House and in the Senate. And that's probably because we're making a real habit of sustaining their hopes of passing them and/or embarrassing us, by constantly releasing wobbly Dems to "vote their districts" (or states, in the case of the Senate). Like I said, I can understand and sympathize with the desire to get Dems out of the way of common sense gun law reforms. But diving out of the way of any amendment that brings up the "g word" isn't any kind of exercise in common sense.
Common sense is not putting the federal government in the way of responsible gun ownership by individuals and responsible gun regulation by state and local governments. And yes, "responsible," in the case of state and local governments, means living within the bounds of the Constitution as determined by the federal courts. That's the check they have to live with. Not only that, but common sense can also mean, depending on exactly what you're talking about, affirmatively liberalizing federal restrictions on firearms.
What's not common sense, though, is leveraging the gun sensitivities of federal legislators to wrest control of state gun laws away from state legislators. Reciprocity's not some unknown, exotic concept just recently invented by John Thune. It's something every state legislature knows about and considers in any number of contexts, including gun law, as evidenced by the fact that yes, some states have actually entered into reciprocity agreements and/or opted to honor the concealed carry permits of other states.
Others, though they've stood for election and had their tenure in office ratified by the voters of their states and legislative districts, have not. And apparently, this greatly displeases a Senator from South Dakota. And so it must change.
Is it a good idea that it change? Well, views on that can vary. Four hundred fifty or so mayors from across the country certainly don't think so. But what really needs to change is the idea that the "g word" can scare Democrats into overcompensating, scrambling out of the way of any gun rider that presents itself, and then finding important legislation that was meant to do something completely different either losing support or stalling and dying (as has so far been the case with the DC voting rights bill) because of the division over guns and what's "common sense" about their regulation.
In other words, there's a very heavy procedural cost to allowing these sorts of votes to be viewed as solely about the politics of guns, and not about the politics of controlling your own agenda. There are times that the minority is going to be able to push you back on your heels. That may be inevitable, and you have to roll with the punches when it happens. But the fear of gun politics is doing much, much more than changing gun laws. It's actually creating a new procedural weapon the dwindling, dead-ender rump of the formerly national Republican Party can use to derail the agenda of a Democratic Party that holds the White House and a (technical) supermajority in the Senate.
Must the leadership from time to time release members to "vote their districts" on tough issues? Absolutely. And admittedly, each time you do it, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue against doing it again.
And might not a vote like this one, which will be required to meet the 60-vote threshold to pass, be a shrewd place for the leadership to allow members to stray, so that they can satisfy gun rights advocates at home (or in this case, in other states as well), but still likely not succeed in making any substantive change to current law? Sure. But that's the short-term view of it. Release some number of Dems less than 20 and you can do just what I described, at least for right now. But then you have 19 or so Senators who've taken advantage of the freebie vote now on record in favor of such a measure. Should the composition of the Senate ever change such that the vote isn't a freebie, those Senators are compromised on the issue and will be hard-pressed to vote against it later, if need be. If they were instead on record as supporting common sense gun laws in theory but also caucus unity in the face of the rash of "how far can we push 'em?" non-germane gun riders, we'd stand a far better chance of actually requiring some common sense in those common sense gun laws everyone says they want.
I mean, have a hearing. Take a good look at what this thing might really mean. Don't just let the minority slap a "gun" sticker on your bill and demand that you genuflect.
It's more than a little ironic, not to mention embarrassing, to constantly be getting slapped around on "self-defense" issues, don't you think?
If you do, you might consider checking with your Senators to get their views. In particular, Senators Bayh, Bennet, Collins, Conrad, Feingold, Hagan, Klobuchar, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCain, McCaskill, Bill Nelson, Pryor, Reid, Snowe, Specter, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Voinovich, Warner and Webb.
