Mr. President, do for gun control what Nixon did for China
This is how our gun debate has gone. Ever since the early 1960s we have seen our gun debate become polarized along political lines. Liberals actually have lost ground since the 1990s, when the National Rifle Association supported universal background checks on gun purchases and then changed its mind.
President Obama was openly frustrated at his own loss of fresh words to express the nation's sorrow of such mass shootings, even as the tragedies continued.
Now it is your turn, sir.
I am moved by a front-page editorial in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, headlined, "Mr. President, Please Act." The call is for "sensible gun control to help stop the slaughter."
That may seem like an impossible dream, considering the exaggerated impression so many of us have been taught to have about the NRA's power.
But I think the time has come for the rest of us to call the NRA's bluff. The NRA is an honorable organization that was primarily devoted to gun safety for about a century before it became more directly politically activist in the 1960s.
You remember the 1960s, sir. It was a time when assassinations and other traumas led to a fierce backlash in favor of gun control.
A half-century later, we see some new realities emerging. Ironically, Democratic victories -- or the threat of them -- have been very good for the sales of the gun industry that heavily funds the NRA's coffers. Federal background checks -- the best measure we have for gun sales -- surged with Obama's elections and the looming possibility of Hillary Clinton's election in 2016.
But your own NRA-backed campaign won and the next day shares of publicly traded firearms companies fell, NPR reported. On the day after the 2016 election, shares of Sturm Ruger and Co. fell 14 percent. Smith & Wesson (since changed to American Outdoor Brands) has fallen by almost half.
And Remington Outdoor Co., another historic brand, recently filed for bankruptcy.
The time has come for us to rethink the politics of gun control, sir. Fewer people are buying more guns. That's their right. But we have allowed a small number of people to determine sensible gun policy for the rest of us.
Breaking that stalemate is where you are uniquely equipped, as president, to make a difference, sir.
And just think: You'll be able to say you achieved something that Obama couldn't. That alone should make your day.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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