“Gun Reform” Means “Nothing Left to Lose”

By Frank Miele for RealClearPolitics
Last week came the announcement that a “bipartisan” group of 20 senators, including 10 Republicans, had reached an agreement on gun law reform in response to the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.
No one should have been surprised. When Democrats hoist “reform” up the political flagpole, a small but reliable cadre of compliant Republicans is always on hand to salute, especially after being told that the nation is in a crisis.
President Obama’s first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said the quiet part out loud during the Great Recession when he told the Wall Street Journal, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
RELATED: 10 Senate Republicans Commit To Gun Control Deal With Democrats, Biden Heralds As Most Significant Legislation In Decades
In that case, it meant spending nearly $800 billion on Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus program that was supposed to lift the economy out of danger. Did it work? Well, that depends. The recession ended, but it would have ended anyway. What it accomplished, that could not have happened naturally, was increasing public dependence on govern …