A bipartisan truce is in effect on gun control issues — a truce on the NRA's terms. Missing from shooting debate: Guns

In the wake of the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, politicians on both sides of the aisle are passionately debating the role of incendiary rhetoric.

Very few of them are talking about guns.


Those who have brought up gun control in light of the Tucson shooting have largely been the issue’s regular standard-bearers on Capitol Hill. Even gun-control advocates aren’t very optimistic about their chances.

The fact that the shooting does not appear to be prompting an episode of hand-wringing is exactly the way the gun lobby likes it. That the gun issue has been so secondary, and the approach to the gun component of the incident so tentative, indicates the extent to which the issue has subsided in the past decade.

A bipartisan truce is in effect on gun control issues in Washington — a truce on the National Rifle Association’s terms.

The NRA’s recognition of this is evident in the group’s response to the Arizona tragedy. It hasn’t bothered to mount a major lobbying push to make sure lawmakers have their guns-don’t-kill-people talking points. Congressional office staffers say there’s been no contact from the group on the topic.

Its only statement on the shooting, repeated by chief lobbyist Chris Cox in an e-mail to POLITICO Monday, was this: “At this time, anything other than prayers for the victims and their families would be inappropriate.”

The message is clear, and it’s one that most lawmakers seem to have absorbed: Not only is access to guns irrelevant to this discussion; bringing it up would be downright insensitive.

The signal piece of gun legislation to come out of the Arizona shooting looks to be a bill that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) plans to bring up as soon as this week. It would ban the manufacture and sale of high-capacity magazines such as the one Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s would-be assassin, Jared Lee Loughner, attached to his Glock 19, allowing him to fire off 33 bullets without reloading, rather than the 10 or so in a typical clip.

“The only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who plans to introduce McCarthy’s legislation in the Senate, said in a statement. “These high-capacity clips simply should not be on the market.”

But McCarthy and Lautenberg are up against a political consensus that has only hardened in recent years as Democrats made inroads into Republican territory largely on their ability to neutralize the gun issue. Some of their red-state victories were with pro-gun candidates such as Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb.

“The battle over gun control is over in the sense that it’s decided that you’re allowed to have guns in this country,” former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a pro-gun Democrat elected governor of Vermont with the endorsement of the NRA, told POLITICO in an interview.

What needs to be reopened, he said, is a debate on “common sense” measures such as whether people can buy weapons without background checks at gun shows, where and how firearms can be carried, and bans on certain types of weaponry.

He pointed to recent initiatives, such as New Hampshire’s party-line vote to allow guns to be carried in the halls of the state Legislature, as extreme measures that may provoke a backlash. “I come from a hunting state. Vermonters are very practical,” he said. “Last time I checked, there were no deer in the New Hampshire statehouse.”

Gun-control advocates hope that, because one of its own has become a victim, Congress will see things differently. But with a new, solidly pro-gun Republican majority in the House and a Senate stocked with red-state Democrats up for reelection, there are few indications of widespread conversion on the issue.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who carries his concealed weapon with him to events, said flatly he would not support McCarthy’s efforts to ban sales of high-capacity magazines.

“I don’t think we should overreact or underreact based on this incident,” he told POLITICO. “It’s too early to understand all the scenarios, all the facts surrounding this particular incident. But my immediate gut reaction is no — absolutely not.”

Any attempt generated by the Arizona tragedy to limit firearms access is just opportunism by a political faction seeking to advance its agenda on the backs of the grieving, said Charles Heller, secretary of the Arizona Citizens Defense League.

“I’m certain that people anxious to dance in the blood of the victims will call for [restrictions],” he said. Heller, who is also a talk-radio host, plans to encourage Arizona to provide firearms training to legislators “so they are better able to defend themselves.”

As for whether gun control will gain traction in the wake of the Tucson shooting, he said: “Hopefully, the House and the NRA will maintain a spine and it won’t go anywhere. As long as nobody goes wobbly, I think we’ll be fine.”

The recent trend line has, if anything, favored more expansive gun ownership rights. Arizona has continually loosened its gun laws in recent years, with a 2008 law permitting guns to be carried in bars and a measure last year that made it one of three states to allow the carrying of concealed weapons without a permit.

In Washington, too, legislative action on guns in recent years has centered around easing rather than increasing restrictions. In 2009, the Senate passed an amendment by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) that removed D.C.’s ban on possessing handguns and some semiautomatic weapons. That year, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s amendment to allow gun owners to carry concealed and loaded weapons in national parks passed both the House and the Senate, while an amendment by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) to allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines failed to get enough support to cut off debate in the Senate, where it nonetheless garnered 58 votes.

Democrats’ abandonment of their cause has dismayed gun-control advocates, who have had fewer and fewer friends on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy, whose husband was killed when a gunman opened fire on a Long Island commuter train in 1993, is the exception — gun-control advocates’ guardian angel.

Maybe, said Chad Ramsey, federal legislative director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, lawmakers will no longer see the issue as disposable after the Giffords shooting.

The nation’s ever-loosening gun laws are a “result of this willingness to allow the gun issue to slide,” he said. “Folks said, ‘We’ll let them have the gun issue; it’s politically better to do that.’ Maybe some of them now will say, ‘Maybe that was a bad idea. Maybe I should have stood up.’”

In recent years, groups such as the Brady Campaign have settled for incremental, technical changes. Only minor legislation came out of the 2007 Virginia Tech campus massacre, in which a student with a history of psychological problems killed 33 and injured 25 others.

Then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, issued an executive order making it harder for people who have been committed to mental health treatment centers to buy a gun, and President George W. Bush signed an expansion of federal background checks to include more comprehensive reporting of mental health records.

In the same vein, McCarthy’s push to restrict extended gun clips is seen as the best advocates can hope for now.

Jim Kessler, a former policy director for the now-defunct Americans for Gun Safety, said crime and guns are no longer defining issues in America as they were in the 1980s and 1990s, when crime rates were far higher than they are now.

Additionally, “the NRA is the most effective single-issue lobbying group in America,” with an endorsement widely coveted by candidates from both parties. It doesn’t help, he said, that gun-control advocates have been relatively fractured.

Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat and a vocal gun-control supporter, said he’ll most likely be on board with McCarthy’s legislation, but he said he’s “realistic” about its chances.

“When I was attempting to get a hearing, it was nearly impossible,” Quigley told POLITICO of his efforts on the issue in the previous Congress. “I was told we couldn’t call it a hearing, it was a ‘briefing’ because they didn’t want to offend the NRA. I think leadership was weak on this issue.”