Now that the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, has made sure an assault weapons ban won't even get a vote has he set his sights on gutting universal background checks?
In announcing the demise of the assault ban the Majority Leader also warned that he might shelf an expansion of background checks to cover private sales. Instead, about all that would even be put to a vote in the Senate are bipartisan measures cracking down on illegal trafficking of firearms.
If the Democratic leadership is too afraid to even allow a vote on closing the gun-show loophole -- a primary target for expanded background checks - then gun control advocates have truly lost the momentum again.
And where is the Obama Administration? The President was out of the country when all of this happened. And Vice President Joe Biden, supposedly the point man to get this done, hardly sounded the trumpets to battle when reacting to Reid's retreat.
NPR's Melissa Block: If you can't get the assault weapons ban through the Senate, does that represent a failure on the administration's part and on your part as someone who's really spearheaded this effort?BIDEN: Well, look, obviously, you and others informed in the media will make that judgment, but my experience, having been the only guy that did this once before, along with Dianne Feinstein and others, is that this doesn't necessarily happen in one fell swoop. ... So I don't -- I don't see this as there's an automatic end point. That, OK, there's one vote. This is it. It fails. Now, we're -- we move on. We are going to continue to push for logical gun safety regulations. Eventually, the will of the people is going to -- are going to prevail, and we're going to keep at it.
Craig hosts daily chats at craigcrawford.com