We don't need the NRA or the right; we do need to stop worrying about their clout.

Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, who came to the House after her husband was killed in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road, said Friday that she would not let that happen this time. “The time to talk about it should have been after the last shooting or the shooting before that,” she said.

Ms. McCarthy said she had met with her staff on Thursday to plan her legislative battles for the coming year. At that meeting, she said, she declared that she would resume her quest for far-reaching gun violence legislation, reinstating the assault weapons ban, banning high-capacity ammunition magazines, instituting criminal background checks on gun buyers at gun shows, and improving instant background checks to more thoroughly catch people with histories of mental illness.

“I’m not going to be shy anymore,” she said. ...NYT

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Almost five years ago Thomas Schaller published an important book titled Whistling Past Dixie, which basically argued that it was time for Democrats to stop running scared of the views of Southern whites — they weren’t going to get those votes anyway, and demographic change had proceeded to the point where they could win national elections without the South. Indeed, so it has come to pass: while Obama did win Virginia, he did it by appealing to the new Virginia of the DC suburbs, not the rural whites, and otherwise he had a totally non-Dixie victory.

So Nate Cohn argues that this same logic applies to gun control: the voters who care passionately about their semi-automatic weapons are rural whites who ain’t gonna vote Democratic in any case — and the new Democratic coalition doesn’t need them. David Atkins takes it further, saying the awful truth: the pro-gun fanatics are basically the kind of people who think that Obama is a Kenyan socialist atheistic Islamist, and the urban hordes are coming for their property any day now. People, in other words, who already vote 100 percent Republican — and lose elections. ...Paul Krugman

That makes almost too much good sense.  I think many on the left have been wondering why we keep crumbling every time we come up against the crazies.  When you're dealing with vicious people, keep smiling, and do whatever you can to disarm them (literally and figuratively).  No need to pull a gun yourself.  Just walk away swiftly and follow up by doing whatever you can to make sure they are isolated. 

Remember:

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This kind of response from the Justice Department is just what we don't need:

After the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and others at a supermarket in Tucson in early 2011, the Justice Department drew up a detailed list of steps the government could take to expand the background-check system in order to reduce the risk of guns falling into the hands of mentally ill people and criminals.

Most of the proposals, though, were shelved at the department a year ago as the election campaign heated up and as Congress conducted a politically charged investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious gun trafficking case, according to people familiar with the internal deliberations. It is not clear which, if any, of the conclusions were relayed to the White House. ...

...The Justice Department’s study, according to people familiar with the deliberations, did not focus on new restrictions on the kinds of weapons that most law-abiding Americans may purchase, on the premise that those would be nearly impossible to push through Congress. ...NYT

Help!  Reform of DOJ (including a new AG) is needed.

Congress?  Even more...