Newtown: Reaction of gun rights advocates

Resident MSNBC conservative Joe Scarborough bears his change of heart over gun regulation during the broadcast of "Morning Joe" on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012. /MSNBC


For those of us curious about whether the massacre of 20 first-graders will jolt the United States into effective action against gun violence in general and assault weapon shooting sprees in particular, it's interesting to gauge the reaction to Newtown's torment among staunch gun advocates.

At least two gun rights advocates, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, are calling for meaningful reforms to blunt easy access to military-style firearms. Scarborough and Manchin's willingness to embrace "reasonable" solutions to the country's gun violence problem is a welcome change to the stiff, ideologically driven opposition to any efforts in Washington or statehouses to come to grips with the thousands of annual U.S. homicides involving guns.

But if you're waiting for the National Rifle Association, the premier U.S. gun rights organization with a powerful lobbying machine at the national, state and local level, to be part of the solution, don't hold your breath.

It's been three days since the Newtown shootings, and the NRA has made no public comment on the incident. There's not a word to be found on the NRA website about Newtown. According to techcrunch.com, the NRA has hidden its Facebook page from public viewing to avoid "flaming" against the group and its members. And The Daily Beast reported that the NRA's National Firearms Museum at its headquarters in northern Virginia was "silent and somber" the day after the Newtown shootings.

Some of the solutions to U.S. gun violence, such as the secure storage of firearms in American homes, are largely out of lawmakers' reach. But many necessary steps, such as restricting or banning access to assault weapons, will require new laws and the cooperation of the NRA, which not only has lobbying clout but also tremendous influence over a wide swath of American voters.

Does the horrific violence unleashed in Newtown represent a tipping point for American gun culture? Or will the ineffectual pattern of the past, mourning and revulsion followed by a return to the status quo, persist?

Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle similar to this model in his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The Bushmaster is a direct descendent of the fully automatic M-16 rifle used for decades by the U.S. military. Fully automatic guns have a rapid rate of fire commonly associated with machine guns. Semi-automatic guns have a slower rate of fire than machine guns but can fire one bullet at a time in quick succession. /Image via motherjones.com