Joe Biden on the continued push for gun control

I disagree with almost everything here: the claims about the support and no "substantive reasoning to be against it." From Rolling Stone magazine:

. . . The biggest push since the inauguration has been on gun control. The president made you the point person, and yet the background-check measure failed in the Senate, even though it was supported by 90 percent of the American people. What does it mean that we can't pass even the weakest measures to curb gun violence? 

It means two things. One, that we have had an impact on the public's thinking. If we did that poll a week before Sandy Hook, my guess is you wouldn't have 90 percent of the American people. They said, "You have to do something." So we've already won the battle with the American public on this, not just on background checks but on magazines, on assault weapons, et cetera. This is a case where the public is way ahead of Congress, and the Congress hadn't figured it out, just like they were . . . 

Did you get blowback from the president or people in general? 

I got blowback from everybody but the president. I walked in that Monday, he had a big grin on his face, he put his arms around me and said, "Well, Joe, God love you, you say what you think." I knew he agreed with me. It wasn't like he was in a different place. My point is: That's where the public is on guns. There has been a seminal shift in the attitude of the American public toward gun safety. 

Is the Senate really that insulated from the rest of the country? 

A lot of our colleagues – a few Democrats and a lot of Republicans who know better – thought, "The public hasn't changed, if I vote with you, I get beat up. . . ." The 17 or 18 people I called and spoke to thought they would get in trouble supporting any additional, quote, "burden on gun ownership." The ones who still said no, the four Democrats and remaining nine or 10 Republicans, they didn't offer any substantive reasoning to be against it. In one form or another, they all said the same thing: "Joe, don't ask me to walk the plank, because the House isn't going to do anything, anyway." The other one was, "Joe, I know it's 85-15, 80-20, 90-10 in my state. You know how it works: The 10 percent that are against, they're all going to be energized; they're going to organize against me. And the 90 percent who are for it, it's not going to be a determining vote for them." My argument was, "You've got it wrong. The public has changed." And guess what? It turns out we were right. To use the vernacular, there's suddenly a lot of senators out there who have seen the Lord. You find out that the senator from New Hampshire is in trouble; she voted no. I can name you four senators who called me and said, "Jesus, I guess you were right – maybe we can find some other way of doing this. Can we bring this back up?" 

So what's the next move? 

We're going right back at it. The biggest thing that's changed is that the people who were for the background checks are saying it will be a determining issue. There's pace on the ball now; this is a different country. I'm convinced we'll be able to bring this back up, and I'm convinced we can win this. . . .

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Biden: Gun control will come after immigration passed

So much for any lingering hopes that the gun control issue was really going to be put on ice for a little while.  From Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden on Monday acknowledged what everyone involved in gun control has been saying privately for weeks: Any votes for expanded background checks must wait at least through the summer while the Senate debates immigration reform. 

Biden offered the White House timeline to a group of about 20 representatives from faith-based organizations, three people who attended the meeting told POLITICO. 

The vice president’s words mark the first time the White House has revealed a timeline that has been widely discussed among gun control advocates and senior aides to senators who are pushing background checks. . . .

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Gun control push not going away: "Senators Quietly Seeking New Path on Gun Control"

Admittedly, given that this is from the New York Times, it might not be something that one wants to put much weight on, but it is still a warning that one should be careful about:

Talks to revive gun control legislation are quietly under way on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan group of senators seeks a way to bridge the differences that led to last week’s collapse of the most serious effort to overhaul the country’s gun laws in 20 years. . . .

Meanwhile Vice President Biden promises:

"For the first time ever, you have people who are for gun safety, for increasing background checks," Biden said. "Two out of three of them say it will be a major determining factor in how I vote. That's the political dynamic that has changed. So I think we're going to get this anyway. I think this will pass before the year is out, within this Congress." . . .

Earlier Senator Harry Reid made this promise:

"Make no mistake, this debate is not over," Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday after lawmakers voted down a string of amendments to the bill. "In fact, this fight is just beginning." . . .Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the bill is not dead, though it might have to be altered."Either through the fury of constituents who were wronged yesterday or by revisions to the bill, we will try to bring this back up," Murphy said. . . . 

UPDATE: "Manchin says he's working to get another Senate vote on gun background check" 

. . . Manchin told “Fox News Sunday” that he’s going to rework the proposal to get it back to the Senate floor.
“We’re going to work this bill with all of our hearts,” he told Fox News. . . .
On Friday, Toomey said he had no plans to revive the proposal.
"My own view is very simple: The Senate has had its vote. We've seen the outcome of that vote. I am not aware of any reason to believe that if we had the vote again that we'd have a different outcome," he said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Manchin told Fox: “I don’t think he’s done.” . . .
Senate Majority Harry Reid said days after the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey proposal that he has “hit pause” on efforts to pass comprehensive gun-control legislation.
He said last week the proposal remains a work in progress but no action is being taken now.

The full transcript of the Fox News Sunday interview is available here.

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Vice President Joe Biden makes impassioned plea for more gun control

Surely a lot of states are going to pass very stringent gun control laws.  I don't know about federal regulations, but we will have to see if Biden is right there.  From The Hill newspaper:

. . . “I’m not asking you to vote for something you don’t believe, but I don’t want to hear about, ‘well we can’t take it on because it’s too politically dangerous.’ The world has changed,” Biden said in a 25-minute address to Democrats at their annual retreat in Leesburg, Va. 

Biden argued that the political and media climate had shifted dramatically from 1994, when many Democrats blamed their support for an assault weapons ban and other gun-control measures on the party’s loss of its congressional majorities. 

“There’s an overwhelming consensus about the need to act that didn’t exist in ’94 and a general consensus about the kinds of thing we have to do,” Biden said. . . . 

“It’s not acceptable for us to do anything other than try to do all of them,” the vice president said of his task force’s recommendations. . . .

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Background checks have "no impact," "zero" costs on law-abiding?

No costs?  Seriously? There are delays for the even the checks that aren't eventually denied, simply because many take up to three days to process.  Virtually all the background check denials are also mistakes and thus add weeks or months before people are able to obtain guns for self defense.  For most people this delay will simply be an inconvenience, but for some it will make the crucial difference over their safety.  Vice President Joe Biden has this claim:

“There should be universal background checks, universal background checks,” Biden said. “It in no way impacts upon someone’s ability under the Constitution to own a gun. Zero, zero. It’s enforcing a law – some folks say, ‘Look, just enforce the laws that are on the books.’ Well, the first step to do that is put a law on the books that says all those folks that have adjudicated incapable of owning a gun under the law, make sure we have access to their names. That’s why there is a need for universal background checks.” . . .

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Biden gives his expert advice on what weapons to use for protection after an earthquake

Do semi-automatic rifles have advantages over shotguns for self protection?  Sure, for example, that you can fire more shots before you have to reload.  They are also better at longer ranges than shotguns.  AR-15s also don't have that much of recoil, which might be particularly important for smaller women.  But do shotguns also have their advantages?  Sure.  It just seems foolish to categorically say that one is clearly better than the other for self defense.

"[G]uess what? A shotgun will keep you a lot safer, a double-barrel shotgun, than an assault weapon in someone's hands, who doesn't know how to used it, even one who does know how to use it. You know. It's harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than a shotgun, OK. So you want to keep people away during an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells," Biden was responding to a question that was raised during a Google Plus Hangout about reducing gun violence. . . .

The remarkable point here is that the media reports Biden's advice without asking critics whether it makes any sense.



Cops have been less safe after the assault weapon ban ended?  Biden claims that there was a large benefit from these laws for police officer safety.  Yet, it is pretty hard to look at this chart and see any evidence that police officer deaths from rifles were impacted beneficially by the assault weapon ban.  Certainly not a large benefit as Biden claims.  Deaths from handguns seems to have fallen after 1994, but there was no increase in that either after 2004.  

Data sources

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2011/tables/table-27

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2007/data/table_27.html

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2004/table28.htm

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/1998

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