How the White House Scandals have altered the gun control debate

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Stewart: Well, congratulations, President Barack Obama.  Conspiracy theorists, who generally can survive in anaerobic environments, have just had an algae bloom dropped on their fucking heads.  Thus removing the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver.  Skepticism about your opponents.  'Gun control. Why can’t we have background checks?' 

Roll tape. 

Cruz: “I believe it would put us inexorably on the path to a national gun registry." 

Stewart: “Oh, right, a national gun registry. And the government is going to overreach and there’s going to be a registry. And the government’s even capable of that kind of overreach. And they’re going to take your guns away from you.” 

CBS news report: “The Internal Revenue Service admitted today that some of its employees targeted conservative political groups.” 

Stewart: “Mother****ers!  This has, in one seismic moment, shifted the burden of proof from the tin-foil-behatted [conservatives] to the government.”

Joe Scarborough:  “I have been saying for months now, and everybody knows this, that I believe in background checks.  I believe that after Newtown, after Chicago, after . . . , we need background checks.  My argument has been: don't worry the government will never create a national registry.  The government is never going to create a national registry. . . .  My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals.  Because People will say, ‘Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?’  This is devastating, this IRS scandal is devastating.”

Piers Morgan: "I have had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here saying to me, the reason that we have to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government.  I have always laughed at them.  I have always said don't be ridiculous, your own government won't turn itself on you.  But actually when you look at this, it has nothing to do with guns, it is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government.  I think that what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior.  I think that what the Department of Justice to the AP bordering on tyrannical behavior."

I personally don't make the tyranny argument.  I am not saying that the argument is wrong, but just that I don't feel comfortable arguing about issues that I can't measure and test empirically.  My argument has been that background checks, as they are actually working, would be counterproductive.  Well, it appears that argument has actually be very persuasive to people who I probably could never reach with the type of empirical arguments that I would normally raise.

UPDATE: Democrats in congress are admitting the obvious here, that these scandals might prevent new laws that Obama is pushing.  From The Hill newspaper:

Speaking Monday on MSNBC, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said the multiple inquiries into the conduct of IRS employees could undermine the push for immigration reform if the oversight effort becomes politicized.  

"The difficulty of turning this into too much of a political effort will be, it will undermine other efforts like tax reform, like immigration action, like work on gun violence issues," said Levin, who is the ranking member on the tax writing House Ways and Means Committee. . . .