On Tuesday, I attended a meeting at the U.S. Department of Justice with representatives from the White House, the Vice-President’s office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the FBI, and others from the Obama Administration, along with leaders from the gun violence prevention movement, to discuss how to reach the goals outlined in the President’s statement. Officials from the Administration indicated that this was the first of what they hoped would be a series of discussions. They said they had not settled on, or excluded, any relevant proposals.
The question in my mind is whether the Administration intends to keep this “series of discussions” going right on through the 2012 elections, or whether he’s going to be foolish enough to get behind specific Brady proposals before then. Helmke noted that the length of the meeting (90 minutes) and the number of White House officials at the meeting “signaled to me that the President is serious.” We’ll see.
I hate to burst Helmke’s bubble, here, but you can’t really count on Obama’s “signals” as an indication of what’s going to happen; until the president signs a law or an executive order regarding gun control, all his “signals” don’t mean squat.
And even then, it might not mean anything at all (see: executive order closing Gitmo).
A 90 minute meeting is considerably lengthy. Esp. given the array of global issues the administration must have to deal with (BHO’s NCAA bracket, Japan, bomb or not to bomb Libya, etc.)
In all seriousness, that seems like a huge focus of executive resources and it should not be dismissed too casually. Hollow hand waiving events often last only 15 minutes for the president.
If it had been Obama meeting with them, I would agree it was significant. But he sent flunkies and people from Biden’s office. Don’t know if Biden himself was involved, because Helmke doesn’t say.
Helmke has to appear optimistic. He’s not going to want to go tell his donors that he thinks the President is jerking his chain, even if he really thought that.
Not seeing an obvious Republican front runner yet, has me thinking that a 2nd term Obama could really attempt to stick it to us. Executive privilege could have us eating through all our court money for his entire 2nd term.
We need to beat this guy and get behind any semi qualified Republican. AND get the Senate back.
If Biden himself was there, Helmke would’ve said so.
Exclusive trancript from the White House Meeting
White ouse Staffer: “Hi there, fellows. Meet Pete Helmke.”
Paul Helmke: “Paul.”
White House Staffer: “Pete, l’d like you to meet…Mohammet…Jugdish, Sidney and Clayton.
Grab a seat and make yourselves at home.
Don’t be shy about helping yourselves to punch and cookies.”