Since early in Bill Clinton’s first term as president, the National Rifle Association and its legislative allies have effectively stymied meaningful federal gun control legislation. …
Gun control advocates face structural barriers in Congress — particularly the bias toward small and gun-friendly rural states inherent in the allocation of two Senators to every state — that will always leave them confronting a narrow path. Yet underlying changes in the two parties’ demographic and geographic bases of support may offer a path toward eventually circumventing the NRA-led blockade — particularly if gun control advocates can update the balancing act that Clinton employed in his two landmark victories. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN