President Obama calls for more gun control (courtesy usatoday.com)

Throughout the last two years, the U.S. Senate has been a petri dish of bad gun control legislation. From Dianne Feinstein’s attempts to ban the vast majority of modern firearms to the Toomey-Manchin universal background check bill to which President Obama pinned his hopes (and whined like a petulant child when it didn’t clear the Democrat-controlled Senate) the possibility of a gun control bill passing out of that chamber has been way too close for comfort. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Republican party, it looks like we won’t have to worry about that for the foreseeable future . . .

As predicted by my favorite statistician, the Republican party now has control of both chambers of the U.S. congress. There was a moment a few months ago when it was starting to be a close race, but as of this morning Nate Silver pegged the probability of this outcome at 76.2%.

What does this mean for the future?

At the very least, we won’t see any more serious discussion of gun control proposals for at least the next two years. There’s no hope for passing any legislation calling for additional restrictions on the natural and constitutionally protected rights of Americans, so even bringing the subject up could be touchy. On the other hand, token displays might be on the horizon. Just like how the House has repeatedly passed laws repealing Obamacare, Senate Democrats might try to get gun control bills on the agenda just to get Republicans on the record as voting against them. “Look! They won’t even let us discuss this legislation to protect children!” All politics, naturally, but nothing with any reality of passing.

What might happen — and this I’m all aflutter about — is that we could see the pendulum actually start to swing the other way. National reciprocity. Shall-issue as the law of the land. Repeal of the Hughes Amendment. Changes to the National Firearms Act. It’s all on the table, even though none of it will be signed into law. While the Republicans control the legislature, a Democrat still has the power of the pen. The chances of Obama rubber stamping national reciprocity is about the same as me going on a date with Kirsten Weiss.

In short, not much will change. Republicans will want to exercise their political mandate, and Obama will do everything in his power to obstruct bills they pass. “Petulant child” perfectly describes the way he takes failure, and I don’t expect anything less going forward. He plans to continue to do whatever he wants, whether Congress is on board or not, and that’s going to lead to some interesting times ahead.

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46 COMMENTS

    • Very true, but he’s also extremely vindictive. His team just lost and he may want to punish the winners for winning simply out of spite. Not that this tactic is new or unique to obama or other politicians, that’s just the way I see it playing out.

    • IIRC, the Guns in National Parks legislation was tacked onto a bill that Pres. Ebola really wanted. In order to veto the gun part, he would have been forced to sink his pet law too. There’s no line-item veto, thank’s to the Presentation Clause.

  4. “The chances of Obama rubber stamping national reciprocity is about the same as me going on a date with Kirsten Weiss.”

    This.

  5. The Republicans shouldn’t show any signs of gridlock. They need to pass cuts to the government and austerity programs to show that they can lead in these tough times. Even if these will be futile gestures that will die on Dear Leader’s desk. The CAN NOT show any signs of not doing anything. If they do the Dems will jump all over it and may retake the Senate and/or House and retain the White House.

    Of course, the Republicans are just as big statists as the Dems and they’ll show how they can fight with and for each other, but not for us. Government will grow. The debt will grow. Freedoms will decrease. The Empire will live on and thrive.

    God help us all.

    • All empires crumble eventually and the emperors always assume they’ll last forever. They obviously don’t understand hubris.

    • And beat them to death with their own ‘nuclear option’. Dems made it happy, not they will have to live with simple majority rules. Idiots.

      In reality, I think this needs to be changed back (right after using it to show ‘why’ it is a bad idea).

    • Yeah, but now we are stuck with Rauner. How the hell did a guy who went on record as having donated lots of money to Rahm Emanuel end up winning the Republican primary?

      • ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN QUINN. I’m not crazy about Rauner either. And I can’t move to Indiana yet…

  8. I did my part. I voted for 8 NRA A rated Republicans. I’m not sure what influence a state secretary of agriculture has on gun rights, but…

  9. Why are you guys trusting one statist party over another? The Republicans will want to disarm you as well.

    • Have a solution to the problem as you see it? Preferably a solution that has odds better than a snowball’s chance in h3ll please.

    • The Republicans will do it more slowly. Consider: In NC the libertarian candidate for senate took 3% of the vote from Tom Thillis and Kay Hagan came uncomfortably close to winning the race as a result. I am not a fan of Republicans. However I acknowledge that our only shot at keeping pro-2A politicians in power is to pick one of the two parties. Register as a Republican and vote in the primaries, then buck up and vote for a Republican in the General Election. Don’t throw away your vote.

      • Don’t assume that Libertarians would vote republican if there were no Libertarian on the ballot. Back when I was involved with the Ls I knew plenty who’d go for the Democrat if they had no choice.

        It’s also fallacious to think of them as “republican” or “democrat” votes that the libertarians “stole” anyway. The vote belongs to the person who casts it, not some party. It’s up to the candidate to EARN the vote.

  10. Colorado is looking good. Governors race is super close as of this writing. But, Beauprez is leading over Hickenlooper.

  11. “At the very least, we won’t see any more serious discussion of gun control proposals for at least the next two years.”

    Perhaps at the federal level, although a bad shooting may change that too, but a few States will certainly have a “discussion”, and Bloomberg will be paying to put more anti-gun initiatives on the ballot even in pro-gun states.

  12. “Repeal of the Hughes Amendment.”

    Hahahahahahahaha! Best laugh I’ve had in a week. Good stuff, Nick.

    If you think the Republican party actually wants you to have readily available, inexpensive select-fire rifles, you’re deluding yourself. Admittedly, there are some Republicans in Congress who are true supporters of the Second Amendment, but most are just right-wing statists whose belief in the right to keep and bear arms would be jettisoned in a heartbeat if it meant losing an election and having to get a real job.

    Fortunately, their base of voters and pro-2A lobbying groups have so far been pretty good at holding their feet to the fire and not allowing much backsliding on the issue. But there is exactly zero chance that they’ll make the slightest move to repeal the “machine-gun ban”. We might, if we’re really, really lucky, get suppressors off the NFA, but I’m not going to hold my breath for even that little scrap.

    • I think our first step is getting the Senate to vote on the National Reciprocity Bill. This one thing would cut the legs off of all the states that think they can violate citizens’ constitutional rights. A big step for gun rights, but a huge leap for human rights nationwide.

      The next step for the election booth is electing a strong Republican President. Romney or McCain would not qualify. Then begin enforcing the law. DC, IL, NY, and NJ have been resisting the rulings of Federal courts for too long. The president should use the army or national guard to enforce the law in states that resist. It has been used several times in our past, and it should be used again.

      • “The president should use the army or national guard to enforce the law in states that resist. “

        ???

        That, my friend, is a VERY, VERY dangerous path.

        • They were used for desegregation. Who was it that did that?

          In fact, the Feds would start with the use of Federal Marshals, FBI and other of the alphabet soup agencies in enforcing Federal Court orders, and we are a long way from that at this point.

  13. I was hoping someone would poll me upon exiting after casting my ballot so I could explain that I was a single-issue voter this cycle… but no one cared 🙁

  14. It’s two against two, and the Dem’s two have all the fortitude and much of the power.
    The House and the Senate, especially when led by ball-less morons like House Speaker Boner, won’t do much of anything for fear of the White House and Media aligned against them.

    If the president vetos Republican passed bills, the media will tell us that only the President cares about our needs. If the legislature refuses to pass Dem introduced bills, the media will tell us how the Rs have stalled our great country in partisan gridlock. And the Rs will cave, even to the point of confirming judges who make Sonia Sotomayer look pro-gun.

    • All that stuff doesn’t seem to have happened in the past 2 years, tell us why you think it will now.

    • Probably not gonna happen. Any overturned veto would require a lot of Democratic support. Republicans have a majority, not a supermajority.

  17. “It’s all on the table, even though none of it will be signed into law. While the Republicans control the legislature, a Democrat still has the power of the pen. The chances of Obama rubber stamping national reciprocity is about the same as me going on a date with Kirsten Weiss.”

    Remember, however, that vetoes can be overridden.

  18. Obama already passed gun control without going through Congress. I give you:

    -The 5.45 7n6 ban even though it conformed to ATF standards for being non-AP.

    -The Russian AK ban that like the Chinese one will never go away even if the sanctions are lifted.

    And the Republicans won’t lift a finger to rescind or even try to fight these even if they get the White House in 2016. Every president since Reagan has signed an executive order on imports and it won’t be stopping.

    To those who only buy American and actually support these say goodbye in the future to affordable ammo.

    To those who say that the government can regulate it the last time I checked the 2nd Amendment did not allow restrictions on imports the same way the 1st Amendment does not stop speech or ideas at our borders.

    And to those who say this was to hurt the Russians it doesn’t. All of our 5.45 ammo was coming out of Ukraine and Bulgaria not Russia so we just screwed our allies. Izhmash isn’t making money on the conflict especially when the Russian Army stopped buying from them years ago and they produce most products for the civilian market.

    Say goodbye in the future to imported magazines over 10 rounds since I predict that will be next on the presidential gun ban import extravaganza that many gun owners here don’t give a flying f*** about,

  19. If the Republicans were smart (and they’re not – especially their whiney, crybaby leadership), what they’d do in these two years would be pass legislation that defunds the left in this country. Doing so would happen in a number of obscure, deep-in-the-legislation details and changes, but it would make a very large political difference in how the Democrats run their 2016 campaigns.

    Little things like preventing environmental groups from being able to recover litigation costs from the federal government, for example, would stop a lot of idiotic use of the EPA as a political retribution machine.

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