Reno-Gazzete-Journal:

If we have learned anything in the year that has passed since 20 young children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (also dead were the shooter, Adam Lanza, and his mother, Nancy), it’s that Americans are incapable of having a rational discussion of the role of guns in our lives no matter how many tragedies they have endured.On the first anniversary of the shooting, President Barack Obama called for new gun-control measures, but there will be none. There won’t even be a serious discussion of the possibility of trying to stanch the flood of guns in this nation. Congress and most states gave short shrift to gun-control measures in the past year, and, in Colorado, one state that approved minor changes in the law, lawmakers found themselves the target of a well-financed recall campaign. Already, two have lost their posts.

Oh, we’re quite able to talk about guns.  We have non-stop for more than one year now, and before then always when the collectivists are in office.  It’s just that the country has listened and replied a resounding no.  The collectivists don’t like the answer, and thus the charge that “we can’t talk about it,” or in other words, we can’t talk you into our plans for national disarmament and reservation of the use of force to government forces of occupation no matter what falsehood we purvey.

Joe Manchin knows the same to be true.

Sen. Joe Manchin says rounding up the votes to pass a bill creating background checks for gun purchases next year is going to be “difficult.”

While saying he’s “hopeful” that some would change their minds, the West Virginia Democrat acknowledged there are Democrats who opposed the bill creating background checks for gun purchases.

“Hopefully, they would maybe reconsider,” Manchin said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s going to be difficult to get the extra votes that we need. I’m going to be honest with you.”

Manchin, a gun owner who had a top rating from the National Rifle Association, negotiated a background check bill with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. But the measure stalled in the Senate in April when it failed to get the needed 60 votes to advance.

Manchin said gun owners didn’t oppose background checks in theory but were concerned that government wouldn’t stop with checks.

Note that Joe still has hopes of disarmament of the American people, he just thinks it won’t work.  He hasn’t lost his progressive, collectivist credentials.  Once a totalitarian, always a totalitarian – a lesson we hope that America has learned well when it comes time to cast a vote for gun grabber Chris Christie.

And as for universal background checks, we all know that it wouldn’t stop there.  But that doesn’t mean that we don’t oppose universal background checks on principle.  I oppose it whether it leads anywhere else or not.  It has nothing to do with crime.  That’s just a lie told by the hive.