Why the changing story on a new federal 'assault weapons' ban?

April 10, 3:35 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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    AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Will there be a concerted push for a federal ban of so-called "assault weapons," or won't there?  The answer seems to depend on whom you ask, and even when you ask.  Attorney General Eric Holder, for example, said back in February:

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

Holder also said during his confirmation hearings that he believed that such a ban would not run afoul of the Second Amendment, even after the Supreme Court's Heller decision made Constitutional protection of the right of the individual to own guns a settled point of law.

The White House website still expresses Obama's and Biden's continuing support for a permanent ban.  Senator Kerry and Secretary of State Clinton have both recently called for a ban.

Now, however, we are seeing something of a retreat.  In the immediate wake of Holder's call for a ban, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi showed no real enthusiasm for the idea.

Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect Wednesday that the administration would push to bring back the ban. But Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Thursday that he never talked to her. The Speaker gave a flat “no” when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban.

“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “I think it's clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.”

Recently, Holder himself said much the same thing, to the obvious displeasure of Katie Couric (excerpt).

Couric: Let's move on to gun control, if we could, for a moment. There's been a recent state of mass shootings, as you know. And in late February, you said you wanted to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Then, a month later, you said you wanted to simply, quote, "Enforce the laws on the books." Did someone tell you to back off?

Holder: No. No one's told me to back off. I understand the second amendment. I respect the second amendment. I think we need to use common sense tools to keep the American people safe, to keep our streets safe. And I think the statements that I've made are - are consistent.

Now, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is clearly reading from the same script.

Helen Thomas seems even more unhappy with that answer than Katie Couric did.

But why, I can't help but ask myself, the headlong retreat from calls for a new AWB, especially given the obvious fact of Big Media's fawning support of the idea?

In the wake of the atrocity of the murders of the Pittsburgh police officers, we have seen a growing effort to place a significant portion of the blame not on the murderer, but on gun rights advocates and "right wing" (whatever that means) commentators who, the theory goes, filled the killer's head with unfounded fears of an Obama-led gun grab, thus causing him to go off the rails.  From the Brady Campaign's sanctimonious "The Gun Lobby's Rhetoric Has Consequences," to New York Times Columnist Charles M. Blow's "Pitchforks and Pistols" (and the sequel), the idea, apparently, is that the killer's actions are somehow a "consequence" of urgent warnings about the threat facing the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

My colleagues David Codrea, Daniel White, Dave Workman, and Anthony G. Martin have looked into that in considerable detail--pointing out, basically, that the killer did what he did because he's a raging lunatic, neo-nazi thug--not because some are raising the alarm about the very real danger to gun rights posed by the most anti-gun administration in the nation's history, coupled with a very strong Democrat majority in both houses of Congress.

Could it be that this sudden retreat from calls for a new AWB is just part of the effort to discredit those warning about that threat?

I wouldn't rule it out.