Republicans AWOL on Weapons Ban

I normally don't like the information from NDOL, because it represents the non-progressive arm of the Democratic party. However, their most recent e-message today has some good points:

It's official: the Republican-controlled Congress is set to let the 1994 ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons expire on Monday. That's happening even though the public strongly supports it; the Republican Speaker of the House supports it; the late Ronald Reagan supported it; and the man who thinks of himself as Reagan's spiritual twin, the president of the United States, at least claims to support it. There is no earthly reason for this action other than the ideologically driven hostility of the National Rifle Association to any gun safety measures, however mild and reasonable, and to the bizarre determination of some conservative Republicans to wipe out every vestige of the Clinton administration. Nobody pretends this issue has anything at all to do with the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Nobody uses these weapons to protect themselves or their homes. Nobody uses them to hunt. They are useful primarily to criminal gangs who want to kill law enforcement officers, which is why cops almost universally support the ban. And the ban has worked: crimes traceable to assault weapons have declined by two-thirds since 1994. Asked yesterday about the president's passivity towards the expiration of the assault gun ban, White House spokesman Scott McClellan had this to say: "The president supports the reauthorization of the current law," but "the president doesn't set the Congressional timetable. Congress sets the timetable." Lest we forget, just last week the president was feted by the Republican National Convention as a colossus of strength and unwavering leadership; a brave, Churchillian figure willing if necessary to defy the whole world in the pursuit of his convictions about what's right for America. But he apparently cannot bring himself to pick up the phone and tell his allies in Congress to support his position on the assault weapons ban. There's some talk in Washington that the NRA and other conservative groups intend to use Democratic support for the assault weapons ban to tar John Kerry as a "gun control" candidate, one of the attack-lines that hurt Al Gore in several key states in 2000. If that's the rationale for the president's weakness and vacillation on this issue, it's based on an illusory assessment of Kerry's actual position on gun legislation. Al Gore favored national licensing of gun owners. John Kerry explicitly supports the right of private gun ownership, and like most Americans and most gun owners, believes gun rights carry certain responsibilities, including a willingness to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of terrorists, felons, and children. This year's Democratic Platform included, for the first time, a straightforward endorsement of Second Amendment rights. The assault weapons ban is not an issue that pits "gun rights" advocates against "gun control" advocates. It's an issue that exposes the weird extremes to which conservative interest groups will go to oppose even the most reasonable gun safety measures. And now, it has also exposed the craven unwillingness of the Congressional Republican leadership and the president of the United States to stand up to those interest groups. In the fight to keep military weapons off our streets, the president and his closest friends have simply surrendered.