“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing:” This morning, President Obama announced the formation of what’s essentially a gun control task force—a policy team tasked with crafting concrete proposals to reduce gun violence. The group will be headed by Vice President Biden, and its proposals will be due on the President’s desk “no later than January.” Obama emphatically rejected the notion that the team is a “commission;” he insisted that it will not “be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside.” He also pledged to speak of the proposals, whatever they may be, in his State of the Union address next year.
There are things we can do short of legislation and short of gun laws that can reduce violence in our society.White House press secretary Jay Carney • Explaining that while President Obama supports a ban on the sale of assault weapons, he isn’t pushing for any new laws to be proposed on the matter. Gun control proponents had been momentarily cheered by a few remarks the President made to the National Urban League recently, saying “a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals,” a statement that while quite believable, runs up against rigid opposition from the NRA, one of Washington’s most intransigent lobbies. As Carney made clear, though, the President won’t be taking up this legislative fight — at least not in the near term. We’d venture a guess that Mike Bloomberg isn’t happy about this. source (via • follow)
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