If this legislation dies in the Senate, it's Red State Dems like Joe Manchin in WV who will kill it.
Talk of stricter gun control has stirred up a lot of unease here, a place where hunters vie for top prize (a 26-inch LED television) in the Big Buck Photo Contest, and ads for a gun-simulator game ask, “Feel like shooting something today?”
But before Senator Joe Manchin III invited a group of 15 businessmen and community leaders to lunch last week to discuss the topic, he had only a vague idea of how anxious many of his supporters were.“How many of you all believe that there is a movement to take away the Second Amendment?” he asked.About half the hands in the room went up.Despite his best attempts to reassure them — “I see no movement, no talk, no bills, no nothing” — they remained skeptical. “We give up our rights one piece at a time,” a banker named Charlie Houck told the senator.If there is a path to new gun laws, it has to come through West Virginia and a dozen other states with Democratic senators like Mr. Manchin who are confronting galvanized constituencies that view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement.As Congress considers what, if any, laws to change, Mr. Manchin has become a barometer among his colleagues, testing just how far they might be able to go without angering voters.
And the answer will be "nowhere." We'll here how Joe Manchin tried of course, but in the end he has to go with what his constituents tell him. And his constituents tell him that the Kenyan Usurper is coming for their guns, and that if Joe Manchin helps him, they'll come for Joe Manchin's head in the President's place.
Maybe Manchin will surprise me. I wouldn't count on it however.
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