Mike Littwin: Could we talk about guns? Didn't think so

Commentary

It's no secret what President Obama does to drive liberals crazy. He does it on purpose, after all.

He goes into Bill Clinton triangulation mode, in which he sets himself up as the only honest broker between those holding apparently irreconcilable positions that, upon close inspection, both seem to be slightly off the rails.

If you want an example, all you have to do is look at what Obama wrote about guns recently for the Arizona Daily Star.

The Obama administration has been saying since Tucson that the president would get involved in the discussion. Gabby Giffords has become a symbol of courage and recovery. Her shooting was yet another symbol of the intersection where madness and guns too often meet.

After Tucson, we became engaged in a brief debate about civility. We had this debate, in part, because we didn't want to have a debate on guns. Democrats know that guns have been a losing issue for them -- and that the less said the better.

And so, with no argument, we get instead an unchecked push for more and more guns, and soon you've got the Utah legislature, just because it can, naming a state gun -- the Browning M1911 pistol. Yes, really.

Two months after Tucson, Obama is finally involved, sort of -- if maybe only to get liberal critics off his back for the prison treatment of alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.

His punishment, before he's been convicted of anything, seems to be, well, a naked attempt to humiliate Manning -- and behavior that Obama, in his prepresidency days, would have certainly denounced.

In any case, Obama signed off on the Arizona newspaper article, which says, among other things, that guns are a divisive subject in America and we should take a deep breath, reexamine our own biases and agree to work together to see how another Tucson could be avoided -- and maybe even the other 2,000-plus gun deaths since.

Obama's argument was reasonable, except as it moves into what columnist E.J. Dionne calls "false equivalencies." Is this really an argument between gun grabbers and gun purists, or is it that one side won't move anywhere near the middle?

I have a better understanding of guns since my long-ago move West. I didn't appreciate the level of emotional attachment to guns and the Second Amendment.

I grew up in cities where guns too often meant violence. You don't have to be against guns to be against gun violence -- and trying to figure out ways to limit it.

But I get the argument. I know many people believe that more guns make us safer. I know that people on both sides are unpersuaded by data. And I know, too, that the arguments that we've had in the past are past having at this point.

And so, Obama writes his reasonable commentary, his very reasonable commentary, explaining how he's reasonable and that reasonable things -- like keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people -- are doable.

Here's what he writes: "And, in fact, my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners -- it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges."

Now you'll see liberals go mad. There was no good reason for this push to have guns in national parks. It was part of the push that says guns are great everywhere, that limits are the problem.

Why not parks? Why not college campuses? Why not bars?

Obama doesn't address these issues. These are yesterday's arguments. What he does suggest -- this won't be a shock -- is that opposing groups come together and discuss what can be done.

And the NRA, as you might have heard, says it has no intention of talking to the president. The president is just the president, and the NRA is the NRA.

Tucson nearly became a different story when one of the heroes came close to accidentally shooting another of the heroes.

The idea that basically untrained people, like your kid's third-grade teacher, would shoot down a classroom killer must be argued against every case of a cop or a soldier -- people trained in these emergencies -- shooting the wrong person.

But where there is general agreement is that there can be limits on guns -- like, say, on owning your very own bazooka. And in the wake of Tucson, polls showed overwhelming support for limiting the kind of magazine the Tucson shooter used with its 31 rounds.

But polls tell only part of the story. Polls give us a zero-sum game. They don't measure passion or lobbyist money. They don't measure political courage, either.

I thought the Virginia Tech massacre would be a watershed moment. It wasn't, of course. I knew Tucson couldn't be. Emotions are already running too high.

There are so many other things to argue about. And there's another election coming.

Courage is for another day. All Tucson would merit is a presidential letter to the editor.