Why Today Is Not The Day For Gun Control

In the wake of yet another one of these stupid bloody mass shootings, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said this:

 "There is, I am sure -- will be, rather -- a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day."

A whole lot of people on the left are getting understandably pissed off about this. The rule that we can never discuss gun policy when the costs of America's absurd, wicked gun policy are most apparent is one that serves to eternally prejudice the debate in favor of the pro-gun side, and it legitimately sucks to hear a Democratic Administration endorsing it. But I think the reason why they keep saying this is readily apparent, and can be expressed in three words: Speaker John Boehner. Calls for Congress to pass new anti-gun legislation face an inescapable problem in the fact that Republicans control the House of Representatives, and that we can predict with pretty high certainty that any anti-gun measure will garner exactly 0 votes from House Republicans. Those two facts together make it absolutely impossible that Congress will enact any new legislation on the subject for the next two years. That sucks, but it's true, and there's very little anyone can do (except perhaps to shoot a bunch of Republican Congressmen, which, for the record, I am not advocating!) to make it stop being true. And, this being the case, I can understand why the White House feels that there's no point starting an argument that will only cost them political capital when there's absolutely zero potential to get anything out of it.

This is one of those subjects where there's just an absolute consensus that nothing will ever be done about it. Climate change is another, although I have somewhat more hope there that Republicans can be made to realize that a carbon tax is a sensible, market-based conservative solution to a genuine national problem. ("Somewhat more" does not mean "a lot," just "more than zero.") But the fact that this consensus is right as long as there are 218 Republicans in the House of Representatives only underscores the importance of making there not be 218 House Republicans anymore. Presidents are supposed to get slaughtered in their six-year midterms. It's very important that 2014 buck that trend. Today is just one more tragic reason why. Republican control of the House makes it impossible to get the national government to do anything to solve national problems, or to make the lives of the American polity better or to prevent tragedies. Republican control of the House must, therefore, end.