Why This is Serious

How well we fare is going to depend on a lot of factors, but one of those is how serious the White House is, and this is not a good sign:

The White House is working with its allies on a well-financed campaign in Washington and around the country to shift public opinion toward stricter gun laws and provide political cover to lawmakers who end up voting for an assault-weapons ban or other restrictions on firearms.

One reason they’ve struggled over the past 12 years is that they haven’t had someone in the White House willing to push gun control. You have a President who is very popular with a segment of American society now pushing it in a big, big way. A lot of people seem to think I’m overreacting, maybe because I live in a blue state. I think even people in deep red states with solid representation need to be heard from, because we might need their courage if the GOP leadership starts to look weak. I might also need your legislator twisting the arm of my legislator, to hold the Republican caucus together. If your letters focused on general anxiety about the Republican Party, and an expectation that your representative will be a leader in fighting gun control, that would be very helpful to those of us in blue states in Republican-held districts. You know everything we’ve laughed at the gun control movement about? No money? No supporters? All that has changed:

Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and Ron Conway, a leading Silicon Valley angel investor, are helping finance the Giffords group and will co-host a fundraiser in San Francisco this week, an organizer said. Two wealthy Texas lawyers, Steve and Amber Mostyn, told news outlets Wednesday that they had given $1 million to the organization. Giffords was shot in the head two years ago in a mass shooting outside a supermarket in Tucson.

It’s a different world. Welcome back to the 90s. Now you know why they were so desperate to get leadership from the White House. Because leadership from the White House is, to quote our Vice President, “a big f**king deal.” A lot of folks don’t know how much we’ve benefitted by having no PAC money in gun control for the past 12 years. If you know someone sitting this one out because they think the anti-gun groups don’t matter, slap them silly. We’re not facing the anti-gun groups, we’re facing the White House and the whole Obama coalition, and if you think that doesn’t matter, just ask Mitt Romney whether he agrees with you.

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