Joe Biden is loading up his arsenal of recommendations
Last month we all watched in horror as news media descended on Newtown, Connecticut to cover yet another tragic school shooting. The photos were graphic, the pain was real, and the coverage was relentless.
What also followed was the predictable political gunfight that saw liberals firing off calls for gun control and conservatives lobbing back grenades about Constitutional rights and the Second Amendment. The leader of the NRA went so far as to publicly say, as his stance, that the best thing to do was to arm people at public schools to defend against any further tragedies like this, or at least scare people into not trying it in the future.
President Obama, pragmatic reactor that he is, decided to declare that it was time for action. And he promptly asked his Vice President to spend some time reviewing the issue and come back to him in a month with some serious recommendations about what to do about guns in our country.
Oh, great, I was thinking. We'll never hear about this again. Who's going to remember a month from now that we were going to do something real about gun control?
Well, it turns out VP Joe Biden remembered. Next week he is due to publish his recommendations. He even met with the NRA to talk things over. Regardless of what he comes up with, I have to give him credit for giving them a seat at the table.
Biden was part of the team that got assault weapons banned back in the 1990s, and it is sounding like that recommendation could be front and center once again, along with potential bans on high capacity magazines and expanded background checks.
Whatever the recommendations Biden makes, the thing I want to point out is that Obama said he was going to do something, delegated it, and a month later, it's happening.
That's hitting the bullseye.
Image courtesy of richiec via flickr