Schumer, McCain Guarantee Strong Gun and Ammo Sales Through the End of the Year

Here’s an idea for Congress to create jobs: Threaten to legislate against something. Congress and President Obama have been threatening to pass new gun laws since last December, resulting in mammoth gun and ammunition sales ever since. Which reminds me, it’s been a while since I made a run…

Last week’s vote in the Senate effectively killed off the proposal to expand gun background checks. But Sens. Schumer and McCain are happy to let America know that they’re not taking no for an answer.

The Senate will try again to pass recently defeated gun control legislation, and will be aided by increasing activism from previously neutral voters, Sen. Chuck Schumer predicted today at a press conference.

“I think we will bring the bill back before the end of the year… lots of Senators who thought it was safe to vote against it [April 17] because of the intensity [of gun-rights supporters] are not so sure any more,” Schumer told reporters at an April breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

“I do agree with Chuck that I think the issue will come back,” said Sen. John McCain, who supported an amendment to expand background checks during an April 17 vote.

Both senators say that support for gun control is “expanding” and “intensifying,” but out in the real world it just isn’t an issue that people outside Organizing for Action care about. OFA mainly cares about it as an issue they can use to cite bogus stats about gun violence and gun control (“90 percent of the American people are with us!”) and send out more of those emotionally manipulative emails they’re known for. Only about four percent of Americans rate gun control as a major issue. People are more interested in jobs and, after watching Boston resort to martial law to stop a couple of bombers, more may be inclined to build up their own home defenses.

Schumer and McCain also aren’t in touch with having to deal with competitive elections. As annoying as McCain is on a host of issues to conservatives, he won re-election in 2010 easily. Schumer runs in New York. Neither has to care about voter ire. But Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu and other Democrat senators do. One of them, Max Baucus, just retired.

Chuck and John may well bring a gun bill back up later in the year. We’ll be closer to the 2014 midterm. Unless there is another mass shooting even worse than Newtown — and on the left, they’re basically hoping for that — support will not have built up for gun control. By then we’ll have been through another amnesty war, the economy will still be stuck in neutral, and the gift that is ObamaCare will have kept on giving to anyone skeptical that government is capable of doing anything right. More Democrats may have retired or decided never to run, as keeps happening this year.

So, who’s up for a gun show this weekend?