ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The president raged. The mayor of New York frothed. Joe Biden cried. But at the end of the day, common sense prevailed. The Senate killed the effort to unreasonably expand background checks for buyers of guns.

The measure is not quite graveyard dead; it can be brought up again, but prospects for that are remote. The vote was a bone-jarring setback for the gun-control lobby, and a decisive victory for the National Rifle Association (NRA), which led the fight to protect the rights of all. It was most of all a resounding victory for the plain and simple language of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Chris Cox, speaking plain and simple after the vote for the NRA, observed that the proposal “would have criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.”

President Obama seemed stunned at the result and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, who has spent millions of his own billions to impose his version of the Second Amendment on everyone, was fairly besotted with rage. The president pointed his finger at “the gun lobby” that “willfully lied” to the American people for the defeat of gun-control legislation that he regards as crucial to the legacy of his second term. “All in all this was a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Shame, indeed, Mr. President. The president spoke from the Rose Garden, with families of the children killed at Newtown arranged around him to make a good photo-op. The shame is how the gun-control advocates have exploited the grief of these families, bearing up under a sadness beyond knowing by the rest of us, using them at every opportunity as props to make a political argument.

Mayor Bloomberg may be beyond calming, a man who obviously needs more than 16 ounces of something stronger than a Slurpee to get a grip on himself. “Today’s vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington. More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.”

The mayor’s percentages are suspect, too. A new Gallup telephone poll, taken earlier this month, reveals that most Americans aren’t seeing a lot of backs turned on them. Gallup finds that only 4 percent of Americans think guns and gun control is an important issue, ranking far behind the economy, jobs, dissatisfaction with the government, the budget, health care, immigration and schools. None of Mayor Bloomberg’s millions could change that, so maybe he’s entitled to his insensate rage. But only as long as he stays inside and off the street.

The Washington Times

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