Why can’t conservatives just take the win on gun rights?
On Monday morning, President Obama didn’t even try to use the massacre at the Washington Navy Yard to revive the gun control debate. He praised the “patriots” who were targeted by the gunman, offered the requisite thoughts and prayers, and, without any overt call for gun restrictions, moved on to Syria, the economic recovery and his budget fight with Republicans.
Rather than accept this surrender on gun control, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus accused Obama of a “bizarre response” to the shootings, and House Speaker John Boehner complained the president didn’t “rise above partisanship.”
“President Obama delivered only brief condolences for the victims of the shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., Monday morning, before quickly pivoting to a scheduled attack on Republicans,” protested the conservative Daily Caller.
Of course, conservatives would have been even more indignant had Obama used the occasion to talk about gun control, as he did after the Newtown, Conn., massacre. His response was really a tacit acknowledgment that there is no hope of reviving even the modest gun measure that failed in the Senate in April. If 20 slain first-graders didn’t move Congress, the killing of a dozen adults — a depressingly ordinary event in this violence-numb nation — wasn’t about to change the equation.