Ronald Reagan supported gun control.
It was a popular point of view back in the late 1960's. Black Panther groups had concluded that the police did not protect black neighborhoods and that black men should exercise their constitutional rights. So groups of young black men patrolled neighborhoods armed with rifles and ammunition belts.
The New Black Panther Party announced a goal of arming every black male. Black guys with guns on the streets!!!
White Americans got very nervous and passed regulations on guns.
In the intervening 40 years the politics of the 2nd Amendment changed and the NRA went from wanting "well regulated" gun ownership to wanting essentially unregulated gun ownership. Charlton Heston was the face of gun ownership.
White rural Republican men in pickup trucks do not scare white rural Republican men in pickup trucks. But Muslim immigrant terrorists do.
The murders in San Bernardino reveals an opportunity to change the politics. Shooters Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, obtained the guns they used legally. Farook, a native born American citizen had every right to get weapons of mass murder, stockpile them, and carry them to the point of the mass shooting. He was a free American patriot exercising his constitutional rights until the moment he started killing people.
Farook is the new face of gun liberty.
Trump fans the flames of xenophobia. People are afraid. This is an opportunity for gun control supporters, if they want to take it.
Hillary Clinton will not feel comfortable showing Farook as the face of the gun control crisis. She needs to condemn xenophobia. Trump and the Republicans have already set the stage: Muslims and blacks cannot be trusted and "we" need to keep guns out of "their" hands. Gun control needed a scary face.
The argument need not be overtly racist, because the public has been conditioned and trained to talk in code about race. Americans "get it". There are dangerous people here in America, them, you know who. The sad fact of the San Bernardino murders is that Farook's and Malik's identity is all that is necessary to end debate . Chris Christy says it loud and clear, echoing Trump. We need to emphasize safety, not liberty and privacy.
Gun control is a homeland security issue. Screening, stop and frisk, making storage of caches of weapons open to inspection, limits on magazine size, reviews of religious and ideological backgrounds, reviews of drug use--all of those things can go onto the political table once the face of gun ownership moves from the familiar white guy in a pickup truck to the scary Muslim immigrant the the closed garage door.
I am troubled by use of xenophobia, even for a good cause. But the scapegoating has happened by others, and Farook was exercising his unfettered rights as a citizen and Americans ought to question whether they are comfortable with that. Gun control will happen when people are afraid of guns in the hands of the wrong people.
I take off my shoes for TSA screening not because I have bombs in my shoe but because some people have put a bomb in their shoes. So I am caught up in a security effort intended to catch someone else. OK with me. If the same thing happens with guns instead of shoes, again, OK with me.
We are probably eventually going to have some kind of legislative response to the San Bernardino shooting, and this is a better outlet for people eager to "do something, anything" than some other outlets, i.e. mass incarcerations, closing of mosques, etc.
Let's see if I am right: gun control will move to a homeland security issue.
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