Chicago laws presently infringe on the right to bear arms there. Colorado state laws infringe less on that right. So, does the Constitution protect the right to bear arms across local borders or doesn’t it? Does the Bill of Rights stand against the states? Any finding in favor of expanded individual rights in the case might necessarily extend, for example, to the right to abortion, to sexual privacy, to gay marriage– that is, to a wide variety of rights conservative justices on the court and “originalist” Constitutional scholars have long opposed.

From the Washington Independent:

The issue in the Chicago case, as defined in the petition to the court, is “[w]hether the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so as to be applicable to the States, thereby invalidating ordinances prohibiting possession of handguns in the home.”

The court’s decision to take the case and consider whether the Second Amendment might be “incorporated” – applicable to the states – by the “privileges or immunities clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment suggests that the court is open to reconsidering a long line of cases dating back to 1873 that read that clause narrowly and thereby restricted the ability of the ability of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect fundamental rights. Although the Supreme Court has acknowledged many rights under the Fourteenth Amendment since then, it has done so based on the more tenuous argument that they’re protected by the more limited “due process” clause, which says that the State shall not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Lawyers and judges have at times resorted to complicated legal gymnastics to make the argument that a newly-recognized right falls under “substantive due process.”

That argument has left those rights vulnerable to an increasingly aggressive attack by conservatives who claim judges are engaging in “judicial activism” by recognizing rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The “privileges and immunities clause”, which states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” has the potential to be read much more broadly.

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The report found that 87 percent of guns seized by Mexican authorities and traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the last five years originated from the United States. The critics, however, say the findings are misleading because (1) a majority of guns confiscated in Mexico are never submitted to be traced by the ATF, (2) many of the U.S.-made guns are turning up, not because they’re being smuggled, but because Mexican soldiers are being recruited (with their old, U.S.-made guns) into the more lucrative world of the drug cartels, and (3) some of the semi-automatic weapons that GAO describes as “high-powered” are actually better suited “for shooting prairie dogs and other varmints.”

In this maelstrom arrives a fascinating piece by Mike Melia of the Associated Press, who reported over the weekend that roughly 80 percent of the crime guns seized and traced by Jamaican authorities also originate from the United States — similar findings coming from another independent analysis of another crime-ridden developing country in close proximity to the United States.

Unlike in Mexico, the vast majority of Jamaican guns seized are submitted for tracing. Jamaica and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives find most of the seized weapons come from three Florida counties — Orange, Dade and Broward — all with large Jamaican populations, according to [Mark Shields, Jamaica's deputy police commissioner].

So there goes the GAO critics’ first argument. U.S. small-arms sales to Jamaica’s tiny military are spare, so the second argument doesn’t hold up very well either. As for the third, well, it’s doubtful that Jamaica has much of a prairie dog problem. Rather, Melia writes that Florida’s “lax” gun laws have simply made it easy for smugglers to buy U.S. weapons and traffic them to the Caribbean.

The U.S. and Jamaica both prohibit the unlicensed transport of guns. But like Mexican smugglers, Jamaican ones depend on lax U.S. gun laws, corrupt customs inspectors and front men acting as buyers. Florida gun laws make it relatively easy to buy a legal firearm, and much of the smuggling is done by family and friends, said Shields, the Jamaican police official.

The results are grisly. “With arsenals to rival police firepower,” Melia writes, “the gangs are blamed for 90 percent of the homicides in Jamaica — 1,611 last year, about 10 times more than the U.S. rate, relative to population.”

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Sam Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, speaks about the dangers of the 'nanny state' to a sold-out crowd at the Independence Institute's annual Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms Party June 20, 2009, at the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club in Bennett, Colo. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Revelers made their way about an hour east of Denver to the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club outside Bennett, where an estimated 225 supporters gathered to shoot clay pigeons, imbibe potent potables and puff on cigars at the Golden-based think tank’s annual fundraiser, dubbed “the most politically incorrect event of the year.”

This year’s festivities inaugurated a full schedule of discussions — “Nanny Panels” — and a speech by conservative gadfly Andrew Breitbart on Friday at a Denver hotel (listen here to Independence Institute President Jon Caldara discuss the events with Amy Oliver). Topics included the economics of the “nanny state,” sin taxes and how to fight creeping state parentalism.

Perhaps because Friday’s program broke out much of the intellectual firepower usually on display at the famous ATF party — now in its seventh year — the “Shoot it, slam and smoke it” festivities were more relaxed than in years past. A handful of state lawmakers and Republican candidates showed up, including state Sen. Nancy Spence, Secretary of State candidate Scott Gessler, 7th Congressional District hopeful Brian T. Campbell, and U.S. Senate candidate Ryan Frazier.

After four hours of target shooting, and a seemingly endless supply of stogies, merrymakers settled in for lunch and some harsh words from civil libertarian and Reason magazine editor Radley Balko, who also spoke at Friday’s event. But the real star was Wurzelbacher, whose Joe the Plumber persona turned an impromptu campaign-trail question for Barack Obama into a career as a conservative pitchman.

Wurzelbacher — who really is a plumber, though he admitted he hadn’t gotten a license after moving to Ohio last year — stayed mainly on the rails in a brief speech to partygoers.

“This country has been great for over 180 years,” Wurzelbacher said after urging folks to study the Constitution. It wasn’t clear whether something happened in the late 1820s to make the United States great, but other than a few puzzled glances from the crowd, everyone went with it.

Answering questions from the well-lubricated crowd, Wurzelbacher revealed that he hasn’t made any money from the book he wrote, “Joe the Plumber – Fighting for the American Dream,” issued by the tiny PearlGate Publishing imprint, but suggested there could be “Joe the Plumber” Christmas ornaments in his merchandising future.

Will he consider running for public office?

“Absolutely not,” Wurzelbacher said. “Grassroots is where it’s at.”

Asked who might win his support among potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, Wurzelbacher dismissed Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (“No … no”), before sounding like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin might be his choice.

“Sarah Palin? Maybe,” he said. “She’s a nice lady and I like her. She doesn’t have that gleam of power in her eyes.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won some praise from Wurzelbacher, who ultimately said he worried the candidate was giving in to his handlers.

When it comes down to it, Wurzelbacher said, he didn’t prefer a Republican or a Democrat. “I want an American leader,” he said to cheers.

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(Photo/barjack, Flickr)

You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.

You may be less familiar with the June 1st shootings in an army recruiting office in Little Rock that killed one soldier and wounded another. The suspect in question is an African-American Muslim convert who says he acted in retaliation for U.S. military activity in the Middle East.

Soon, however, these terrible deeds will be forgotten, as are already the three policemen killed by an assault weapon in Pittsburgh; the four policemen killed in Oakland, California; the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York; the 10 in an Alabama shooting spree; five in Santa Clara, California; the eight dead in a North Carolina, nursing home. All during this year alone.

There is much talk about hate talk; hate crimes against blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims, Jews; about violence committed in the name of bigotry or religion. But why don’t we talk about guns?

We’re arming ourselves to death. Even as gunshots ricocheted around the country, an amendment allowing concealed weapons in national parks snuck into the popular credit card reform bill. Another victory for the gun lobby, to sounds of silence from the White House.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote, just days before the Holocaust Museum incident, that “rather than propose concrete action that makes it harder for dangerous people to get firearms — while still respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners — all Washington can seem to muster after high-profile shootings are ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims and their families.

“For his part, the President has also included sincere expressions of ‘deep sadness’ at these tragic losses — though without any call to change any of our policies to prevent those losses.”

Yet, as a presidential candidate, Obama pledged “our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets, from our schools, from our neighborhoods and our cities. That is our duty as Americans.”

The fact is, neither party will stand up to the National Rifle Association, the best known front group for the arms merchants. In Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Holocaust Museum, this week’s Democratic primary for governor was won by state legislator R. Creigh Deeds, a man who supports allowing concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol and opposes limiting handgun purchases to one a month.

After Wednesday’s shooting, a conservative organization immediately offered those of us in the media a chance to interview the founder of “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,” whose expertise, it was said, is in helping people understand why gun control doesn’t belong in a civilized society.

The e-mail went on to say, “Your audience will appreciate [his] non nonsense common sense talk that will make them wonder why anyone wants to ban guns in the first place.”

Thanks, but no thanks. And no thanks to his counterparts among Christians and Muslims who use every violent shedding of blood to try to promote the worship of guns. Guns don’t kill people, they say. People kill people. True. People kill people — with guns.

So let the faithful of every persuasion keep their guns for hunting and skeet, for trap and target practice, for collecting. They can even have a permit for a gun to protect their business or home, even though it’s 22 times more likely to shoot a member of the family (including suicides) than an intruder.

But please, there are already some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and in some years more than 400,000 non-fatal, gun-related assaults. The next time someone wades through a pool of blood to sidle up and champion the preservation of firearms, can’t we just say, no thanks?

Enough’s enough.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes.

(Image/pinkpistols.org)

The plan — to add an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons from one state to another in accordance with concealed carry laws. The possible rationale — to defend gay rights.

“It makes sense for a group of people who would be protected by hate crime legislation to support something that would let them defend themselves before or after the crime,” said one Republican Senate aid familiar with the discussions. “It’s relevant, and we want to work together with gay groups to get the message out.”

While the aide described the discussions over a gun rights amendment to the hate crimes bill as “very fluid,” conservative and pro-gun rights gay groups outside of the Senate are ready to make a real push for it. GOProud, a new gay rights group that broke away from the Log Cabin Republicans in April, has talked with top staffers for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., about how to make the civil rights case for conceal and carry reciprocity.

“We support this because we think it’s advantageous to make it legal and relatively easy for gay people to arm themselves so they can protect themselves,” said Jimmy LaSilva, who became the executive director of GOProud after three years working on policy for the Log Cabin Republicans. “In the next few weeks we want to start highlighting some of those stories. There are people who have averted gay bashings because of their ability to use guns.”

LaSilva and GOProud are currently putting together the names of some of those people. They’re collecting their statements for the first rock-solid deadline in the push for concealed carry reciprocity — a June 23 hearing that came together as a result of a previous Thune gun rights bill. In February, Thune and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., offered similar amendments to legislation that would extend a vote in Congress to residents of Washington, D.C. Both amendments would have legalized gun ownership in the district. Ensign’s passed, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., approached Thune on the floor to offer a hearing on conceal and carry reciprocity instead of a protracted fight on his D.C. gun rights amendment.

“Everyone here is focused on that hearing,” said Kyle Downey, a spokesman for Thune. “It’s too early to talk about the chances of this as a separate bill or as an amendment, but getting the commitment from Leahy on a hearing was quite a victory in and of itself.”

The hate crimes bill was sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and is supported by a range of minority rights groups. The senator’s office and the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign did not comment on this potential amendment when contacted by The Washington Independent.

Liberal opponents of Coburn and other Republicans criticized last month’s amendment to the credit card bill that legalized the possession of loaded weapons in national parks. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups pushed back hard against the argument that Coburn’s amendment had been irrelevant, or that it had been passed as a trick. At the time, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence called the amendment “reckless and extraneous,” while NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre argued that the vote was bipartisan and proved “there is broad and bipartisan support for the Second Amendment in Congress.”

Supporters of concealed carry reciprocity argue that the case for attaching it to a hate crimes bill — if that is the way that it can be passed — makes even more sense than the case for Coburn’s amendment. “Plenty of people have used guns to defend innocent people,” argued attorney and Second Amendment scholar David Kopel of the Golden-based Independence Institute, “including crimes motivated by bias. This is a legitimate thing to attach to any bill that’s concerned with violent crime.”

That’s the case being made by Pink Pistols, a gay gun rights organization whose slogan is “Armed Gays Don’t Get Bashed,” and whose members can recount stories of fending off potential attackers by brandishing their weapons.

“Self-defense with a firearm is a valid and viable method of self-defense and protection,” said Gwen Patton, a spokesperson for Pink Pistols. “Imagine that individuals follow you from a place known in the neighborhood as a GLBT gathering place. They follow you to your car, and when you try to open the door, they hold out pipes and yell — ‘Hey, faggot!’ You pull out a concealed weapon that you have a license to carry. They say, ‘He’s got a gun!’ They drop their pipes and run away. No shots were fired, but a beating was just averted.”

Still, it’s not yet clear whether Thune and his allies will have to go this route to pass concealed carry legislation. It’s still possible that a new hate crimes law will be be folded into the defense authorization for 2009, which would effectively remove it from the amendment process. Thune’s most recent version of the legislation, S. 845, still could be introduced on its own for an up-or-down vote. But only one Democrat, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, has co-sponsored the bill, and Thune’s spokesman Downey worried that “the political side” of the Democratic Party would keep it from coming to a vote. “As we get closer to the election,” said Downey, “they will want to avoid these types of tough votes.”

If they do go the amendment route, supporters of concealed carry reciprocity are confident that it would be passed as part of a hate crimes bill, and not become a poison pill that kills the entire package. “Every Republican senator is on the record with a position on hate crimes legislation,” said GOProud’s LaSilvia. “If this were to be attached, a vote for the bill could be explained as a vote for concealed carry. Gosh — what would happen when the Family Research Council realized that their people were voting for the ‘gay bill.’ It would put a bunch of people in a really weird position. It would be fun to watch.”

One problem. Joe the Plumber announced last week that he was quitting the Republican Party because he is outraged by GOP spending.

“Well, I agree with him on that,” says Caldara. “It would just be fun to have him there.”

You got that right. Among the repeatable quotes from Joe the Plumber: “Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there would be nothing said about that.”

After shooting clay pigeons, revelers knock back “a good, stiff drink of their choice,” Caldera intones in a promotional video for the party, now in its seventh year. “And what better way to finish the day than by smoking a fine cigar while listening to the wisdom of leading free-market thinkers of our time.”

Granted, Joe the Plumber may be considered a leading thinker in some quarters, but can he hit a target?

Here’s a look at the Independence Institute’s premiere social event:

This year’s festivities are set for June 20 at the “swank” Kiowa Creek Sporting Club in Bennett. It costs $150 to join the shooting but only $50 for the luncheon. RSVP here.

Check out The Colorado Independent’s coverage of last year’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms get-together, when conservative writer Fred Barnes was the featured guest.

Independence Institute blogger Ben DeGrow thinks Joe the Plumber is a great choice to help celebrate freedom, but there’s someone he’d prefer: “Short of landing center stage for Sarah Palin herself, Joe The Plumber would be one of the best possible gets for this year’s ATF.”

“Shoot it, slam it and smoke it,” indeed.

Colorado Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall backed the measure introduced today by ultra-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., following a weekend compromise by Senate Banking Committee members that further watered down some consumer protections but still not to the liking of the lobbyist-heavy financial industry.

The 67-29 bi-partisan vote, with one Republican defection with the “no” votes, adds a possible legislative override to the court-blocked Bush Administration 11th-hour rule to permit loaded, concealed firearms in national parks, historical centers and wildlife refuges.

The gun rule is currently stymied by a temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in response to a complaint filed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and National Parks Conservation Association. The Obama Administration decided last month that it would not defend the rule in court after the judge called the government’s process for implementing the gun regulation “astoundingly flawed.”

Poison pill amendments are not unusual in Congress but the attempt to sink a hugely popular law to beef up consumer protections against the predatory credit card industry is curious, at best.

More puzzling is Udall’s vote to support the Coburn Amendment — especially, as a leading proponent of the reform bill who earlier today released the text of a floor speech urging his Senate colleagues to support the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act.

Neither Udall or Bennet’s offices could be reached for comment.

“We will spread the truth about their destructive agendas, drag down their approval ratings, force them to publicly defend socialism, authoritarian gun-grabbing, gay marriage, infanticide and everything else they vote for in Washington, and ultimately, on November 2, 2010, we will take their jobs away from them.”

The Coloradoan’s Bob Moore snagged a copy of Musgrave’s letter but unfortunately didn’t link to a scanned version for all to read its resplendent post-election fury.

The excerpts are tempestuous, even for the former congresswoman’s acerbic standards, with a closing grudge-match swipe at national GOP leadership for pulling its support of Musgrave’s flagging campaign with just weeks to go before Election Day:

In the letter, Musgrave said she lost in a landslide to Betsy Markey in 2008 because “the radical homosexual lobby, abortionists, gun-grabbers and all the rest of the extremists finally spent enough money, spread enough lies, and fooled enough voters to defeat me.”

But she found a silver lining. “Now that I’m no longer in Congress, there is truly a feeling of freedom. I’m not shackled by the constraints of the Washington political world or even the Republican Party. I am free. Free to confront the Left directly and continue to stand strong to protect our families, our values and our country against their relentless attack.”

“I’m launching Votes Have Consequences to play a critical role in that fight — to attack liberal candidates who deserve to be attacked, and to defend conservatives when the Republican National Committee is nowhere to be found.”

“Votes Have Consequences” is a tax-exempt, social welfare project of the Susan B. Anthony List, the conservative, antiabortion response to and polar opposite of the better known reproductive rights group, EMILY’s List.

Musgrave’s role is to raise funds to target members of Congress in the 2010 election cycle who support abortion rights. On a March 12 press call announcing the initiative, the Fort Morgan Republican said she would use the same scorched-earth tactics employed against her by the Defenders of Wildlife in the bruising electoral loss to Markey.

She’s a woman of her word.

UPDATE: We got it! Download a copy of Marilyn Musgrave’s Votes Have Consequences fund raising letter.

Columbine High School security tape capture Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold in the school cafeteria. (Flickr, Fishbowl Collective)

Last month in Southern Alabama, an unemployed twenty-something sheet-metal worker armed himself with two semi-automatic rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. He shot his mother and the four family dogs, and then drove to a neighboring town where he killed four more relatives, four passersby, and then himself. All in all, he sprayed more than 200 bullets across two Alabama counties. The ages of the victims ranged from 74 years to 18 months. It was the worst killing spree in state history.

Since then other parts of the country have suffered similar nightmares. It’s just the type of headline-grabbing trend that might usually get congressional lawmakers screaming from the rafters for policy reforms, like banning military-style assault weapons and forcing gun-show vendors to do background checks on prospective buyers. Gun control advocates argue that such steps would help stem the more than 30,000 gun deaths that plague the United States each year.

But that hasn’t been the case. Instead, the reaction from congressional leaders — even the most vocal gun-reform proponents — has been a long, strange silence.

It wasn’t always this way. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was the author of the successful 1994 effort to install an assault weapons ban, which expired five years ago. Yet last week, less than a month after four police officers were killed in a shooting spree in Oakland, Feinstein told “60 Minutes” that, while she hopes to reintroduce the measure, “I wouldn’t bring it up now.”

Similarly, President Obama — who campaigned on a platform of renewing the assault weapons ban — reiterated his support for that prohibition during a visit to Mexico last week, but added that he’s not “under any illusions that reinstating that ban would be easy.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is another long-time advocate for tightening gun laws. Yet pressed this month about the absence of any gun reform push in Congress, she offered only a vague explanation about the need “to find some level of compromise.”

Spokespersons for both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said there’s no plan on the horizon for gun reform legislation this year.

The reason is no mystery. Although Democrats expanded their majorities in both chambers of Congress last year, they owe those gains largely to more moderate members, who picked up seats in a number of conservative-leaning states that have historically gone Republican. Indeed, when Attorney General Eric Holder in February announced his support for renewal of the assault weapons ban, 65 House Democrats wrote to the White House attacking the proposal.

“Law-abiding Americans use these guns for all the same reasons they use any other kind of gun – competitive shooting, hunting and defending their homes and families,” the Democrats wrote.

Colorado Reps. Betsy Markey and John Salazar were among the signatories.

Not only do those members not want to be seen threatening their constituents’ Second Amendment rights, but Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are bending over backwards to ensure that those seats remain Democratic in elections to come. In this political environment, congressional aids say, even a gun reform push from liberal Democrats would only divide the party and undermine other legislative priorities.

“What’s the sense in expending a good amount of political capital?” asked a House Democratic aide, who asked to remain anonymous due to the political nature of the topic. “You know you’re going to lose. You know you don’t have the votes … It’s never good when leadership loses a vote, and this is a vote they’ll lose.”

Then there’s the issue of lobbying. The pro-gun National Rifle Association is among the most powerful forces in all of Washington. In the 2008 election cycle alone, the NRA’s political action committee spent $15.6 million on campaign activities, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And the group keeps tabs on every vote even remotely related to gun reform, threatening lawmakers with poor NRA rankings if they vote against the lobby’s agenda.

The NRA did not reply to a call requesting comment, but the prowess of the gun lobby was in full display earlier this year during congressional debate on legislation to grant a voting representative to the residents of Washington, DC. That bill passed the Senate in February, but not before the NRA swayed lawmakers to attach language all but scrapping Washington’s gun control laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. Faced with the gun-policy wildcard, stymied House Democrats have refused to bring the bill to the floor.

The reason is simple. The combination of support from Republicans and moderate Democrats all but ensures that the bill would pass. “On this issue, the NRA controls the House,” said the Democratic aide. “It’s that simple. We’re in a political environment in which not much can be done because of the levels of power.”

That’s bad news for gun control advocates, who are pushing a series of reforms to tighten the nation’s gun laws. Aside from reinstating the assault weapons ban, advocates want to force all gun-show vendors, even those unlicensed, to conduct background checks on potential customers to prevent felons and other violent criminals from obtaining weapons — the same requirements currently in place for licensed gun sellers. A Senate bill, sponsored in the last Congress by Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Jack Reed, D-Del., would do just that, but it hasn’t resurfaced this year.

Another proposed reform would force gun makers to adopt a new technology that engraves weapons microscopically with their make, model and serial number — information that would be left imprinted on the bullet casing after the gun is fired. Such a proposal was pushed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., in the last Congress, but it as well has yet to appear this year. All three reforms are supported by public service groups, like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, but have been assailed by the gun lobby as initial steps toward an all-out gun ban.

Lawmakers insist that gun reform hasn’t fallen off their radar, but some gun control advocates are growing impatient. “There are a lot of politicians,” said Doug Pennington, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “even in the face of the mass shootings over the past six weeks, who aren’t exactly sure how stiff their backbones are.”

The debate arrives as a wave of high-profile gun violence has swept across the country in recent weeks. On March 29, a heavily armed gunman killed eight in a North Carolina nursing home. A day later, an IT professional opened fire on his family in Santa Clara, killing six people, including himself. In Binghampton, N.Y., on April 3, a gunman walked into a community center and killed 13 immigrants before turning a gun on himself. A day later, a 22-year-old Pittsburgh man barricaded himself in his home with a stash of assault weapons, killing three police officers in the stand-off. The list goes on.

Michael Bailey, political science professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that, despite the gruesome trend, there simply isn’t the public outcry to inspire Congress to stick their necks out for something as controversial as gun reform. “As terrible as these tragedies were,” Bailey wrote in an email, “there doesn’t seem to be any appetite for thinking about them.”

Even without the recent spate of gun deaths, the debate would be timely. Last Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead, including the gunman. And today marks the 10-year anniversary of Colorado’s Columbine High School massacre where two seniors killed 12 students and a teacher before turning the guns on themselves.

In the absence of any federal movement, some state and local lawmakers have emerged in an effort to fill the void. Last week, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg visited Virginia to urge state lawmakers to pass a bill closing the so-called “gun-show loophole.”

“Criminals do not have the right to own guns, and the gun shows make it far too easy for them to acquire guns,” Bloomberg said. “In fact, it’s easier for a criminal to buy a gun at a gun show than it is for a 20-year-old to buy a beer or for anyone to rent a car.”

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell has thrust himself into the debate as well, pushing last week for lawmakers to take up the assault weapons ban — a prickly topic in a blue-collar state where unlimited gun rights are deemed by many to be sacrosanct.

“They’re made for only one purpose,” Rendell said of assault weapons. “Not for sport, not for hunting, nobody uses them in a duck blind, nobody uses them at the Olympics. They are used to kill and maim.”

Advocates for gun reforms are quick to concede that the proposed reforms wouldn’t prevent many of the gun-related deaths that torment the United States. Only one of the guns used by the Alabama shooter, for example, would have been prohibited under the 1994 assault weapons ban. Still, they maintain, taking some steps to keep military-grade weapons off the streets — and all weapons out of the hands of violent criminals — would go a long way toward improving safety in a country where firearms kill more than 80 people every day.

“That’s not normal,” Pennington said of the enormous number of domestic gun deaths. “We shouldn’t treat that as just the cost of living in America.”

This week she made news for unabashed strong stances on two controversial issues: She defied the president and attorney general by publicly opposing the reintroduction of an assault weapons ban. Then she defied the business lobby and co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

She didn’t have to do either of those things. She didn’t have to stand up and tell anyone what she thought. Hell, no. When it came time, she could have simply voted against the gun ban and she could have waited to see what happened with the pro-Labor EFCA instead of putting her name on it.

But gutsy Betsy Markey didn’t play it like that. Depending on your perspective, she’s either naïve or unencumbered by politics as usual. As Politico reports:

Markey is one of a surprisingly large number of Democratic freshmen sitting in competitive seats who have … challenged the conventional wisdom that at-risk, first-term members should avoid high-profile positions on tough votes.

[…]

There’s no question that in Markey’s case, there is considerable risk to her [EFCA] position. In her Republican-oriented district on Colorado’s Front Range, the area’s 6 percent unionization rate is about half the national average, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. The Chamber of Commerce in the largest city in her district, Fort Collins, has lobbied her to oppose the measure.

Markey makes the case for fully unionized workers and fully loaded AK 47s, even though there’s almost none of the former and probably not a whole lot of the latter floating around the 4th District. That’s fresh.

When she voted for Obama’s stimulus package, she told The Rocky Mountain News she wasn’t concerned with the partisan jabs she’d be taking as a result:

… at this point, I’m really not taking that into consideration. I’m just trying to do my job … The vast majority of [my constituents] are Republican. This is a conservative district … But they know help is needed, that we cannot just allow [ourselves] to do nothing. That is reckless behavior if we would just let the economy continue in a downward spiral. I mean, I think that is a fiscally irresponsible thing to do. The government needs to take action. This is bold action. I think we are in a situation where the cost of doing nothing is huge.

The men already gunning for her seat — official candidate Tom Lucero and unofficial candidate state Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma — with their amateur buzzword pitches (here and here), seem like poseurs by comparison, which is exactly what the GOP does not need in its candidates right now.

The impression that Republicans post-Bush are all pose and no policy is a problem the party doesn’t seem to know how to fix. Mastering Twitter and Facebook are not going to do it.

And neither is jumping aboard excitable Fox Friend Glenn Beck’s crazy-train tour of the country’s FEMA re-education camps!

Josh Penry, state Senate minority leader and gubernatorial hopeful, won’t support the federal stimulus package or state budget reform but he’ll help Glenn Beck look for the “monsters under the bed.” No amount of Twittering is gonna make that look like leadership for a country in economic crisis.