Top Story: The White House will have a plan for gun control on the president’s desk very soon—which may be why the far-right noisemakers are already opening their mouths and salting their feet again.
- Vice President Biden says he’ll give his gun control recommendations to the president by next Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
- “Such a timetable will inevitably lead some to suggest the flurry of meetings this week is mere window-dressing, and that the administration has already decided on how to proceed.” (The Hill)
- What could be in those recommendations? “Universal background checks, limits on high capacity magazines, and the government’s ability to do research on gun violence.” (Roll Call)
- And what about an assault weapons ban? The NRA says it’s not going to happen. “We think most of those proposals are basically feel-good proposals.” And that potentially could scuttle the plan. (Politico) and (The New York Times)
- This excellent, detailed report shows that it’s important to remember that the NRA is a lobby that represents the gun industry, not gun owners. (Huffington Post)
- Whatever happens, a Republican state lawmaker in Wyoming is introducing legislation to make sure state law trumps any new federal gun laws. Because, you know, the Supremacy Clause and the 14th Amendment are so vague. (Associated Press)
- And, sorry right-wing talking points, but there doesn’t appear to be any correlation between how many guns a society has and how democratic it is. (Passport)
- And yet, these sorts of things are said: “I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.” (Talking Points Memo)
And in other news …
- “Diversity as a numbers game is arguably necessary but surely insufficient. You can add up the numbers of African-Americans and women and gays and say ‘This looks right. This is just,’ but surely there are other ways to define identity. … There’s always going to be something lacking.” (National Journal)
- You can count the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce among those conservatives who think holding the debt ceiling hostage is a “mistake.” (Bloomberg)
- Polls: Being a Republican is bad, being a congressional Republican is worse (National Journal)
- The $1 trillion coin in McEconomic terms. (Steven Dennis)
- And last but not least: “Rep. Phil Gingrey says Todd Akin was ‘partly right’ about the body’s ability to shut down a pregnancy after rape. Gingrey was an OBGYN (!)” (Rebecca Shabad)
John Flowers