LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
04.07.13
No Regrets
N THIS WEEK’S Huffington, several of our
reporters consider the
past, present and future of gun control measures in the
wake of December’s mass shooting
in Newtown, Connecticut.
Despite polls showing that a
majority of Americans support
stricter gun laws, and that Democratic lawmakers have little to fear
from backing gun policy proposals, the possibilities continue to
shrink in Washington. As Sam
Stein puts it in his introduction,
noting the dwindling momentum
for change as Newtown fades from
memory, “Lawmakers once hopeful
of crafting bills with broad bipartisan support have been reduced
to scheming out procedural means
for passing watered-down legislation through their chambers.”
Sam also takes us back to the
ART STREIBER
I
fall of 1994, when Dan Glickman,
then a Kansas congressman, experienced the fallout from his support for a ban on assault weapons. Even though Glickman had
recently passed a popular aviation
jobs bill, his office began receiving
angry letters from constituents.
When November came around,
Glickman, who had represented
Kansas for 18 years, was defeated.
“I didn’t know I was in the epicenter of this controversy until I
started going door to door in my
district,” he said. “The NRA had
made this issue Armageddon.”
More than 18 years later, Newtown and a rash of other mass
shootings have prompted calls
for action, including the passage
of a renewal of the assault weap-
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