It’s hard to remember that for a while in the 1980s and 1990s, a limited form of gun control seemed politically possible. Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, badly wounded in the John Hinckley assassination attempt on Reagan, became a courageous Republican symbol for sensible regulation of the most lethal weaponry.
But then too many on Capitol Hill (Democrats as well as Republicans) grew fearful in the face of the frenzied opposition from the NRA. And following the 2008 Heller decision, it seemed the height of folly for legislators to take on gun control since the Supreme Court had so narrowed the framework for permissible regulation. As a result, even though the Aurora shootings took place in a swing state (Colorado) in an election year, Obama and the Democrats at the time never even raised the possibility of new federal legislation.
This should not be portrayed in cartoonish terms as a story of the white hats (liberals with a visceral hatred of guns) versus the black hats (hunters and other Americans who enjoy owning firearms). There was an element of cultural superiority to the urban liberal disdain for gun ownership, just as there was a self-destructive stubbornness to conservative opposition to all forms of regulation.
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