The standard Republican line, which Dems no longer bother to refute, is that we don’t need more gun laws, we just need to enforce the ones already on the books. Indeed, as Bush personally explains on the website for Project Safe Neighborhoods, “If you use a gun illegally, you will do hard time.”
Now the GOP position has evolved a bit — no new laws and stop enforcing the old ones.
Congress has eliminated direct financing for a Justice Department program that has been the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s efforts to prosecute black-market gun crimes.
The move, which Congressional officials attributed to competing budget priorities, cuts federal grants to local and state law enforcement agencies in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed with guns.
The administration had requested a modest $45 million for local grants under the gun prosecution program. Congressional Republicans decided to give it literally zero. A related program to track and intercept illegal purchases of guns by youngsters, for which the administration sought an additional $106 million, also received nothing. Not one penny.
So, what’s the defense?
“It’s a matter of priorities,” a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, John Scofield, said, “and there are going to be things you can fund and things you can’t.”
Actually, this is the perfect response. It is a matter of priorities, and the Republicans are highlighting exactly what they find important. Indeed, while the congressional GOP was cutting funds for gun crime prosecution, it was spending funds on a presidential yacht, a weather museum in Punxsutawney, Pa., a world birding center, Texas, a cotton museum in Greenville, a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kan., and a “Paper Industry International Hall of Fame” in Appleton, Wis.
The Republicans have their priorities; are they yours?