Guns and Democrats

I've been following this discussion pretty closely, and think Mark Kleiman has well-summarized the proper reasoning for Democrats re: gun control:

For a Democrat to deliberately fight the culture wars -- as opposed to standing up for principle in ways that cause cultural strain -- is just stupid politics, in addition to being bad manners. And "gun control," as a political issue, is a culture-war issue. Guns are to the People for the American Way as drugs are to the Eagle Forum: a material symbol of everything they hate and fear. And hatred and fear make bad policy.

The "assault weapons" ban, like gun registration, has almost precisly no value in reducing the rate of homicide with firearms. As a quick reaction to the fears of some big-city police departments that they were losing the arms race to the drug dealers, it made a kind of sense, but the banned weapons never accounted for any significant number of murders, and it's not clear that banning them for purchase by people eligible to buy guns is necessary, or even useful, as a way of keeping them out of the hands of bad guys.

...Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem, and there's no reason to pick a quarrel with them.

Amen, Brother Kleiman. This gun-control crap is a black hole for the Democratic Party. It's irrational, it doesn't work, and it's unpopular. The cost-benefit analysis of the party's position is so heinous that it defies explanation. The party should let it go.