Gun Control? Don’t Hold Your Breath

Newsweek reports:

The beau ideal of Virginia is its junior senator, the volatile Jim Webb, a Democrat who wasn’t hurt one whit when news got out that an aide was trying to carry one of Webb’s pistols into the U.S. Capitol. Sabato says—only half-jokingly—that Webb’s ratings back home went up after the incident.

The right to bear arms means more than its literal words imply: it means a way of life and thinking, involving independence, protection of land, and suspicion of federal—or all government—authority. Virginia is as close to the ground zero of that thinking as there is.

As a result, Sabato said, access to guns is easy—as the shooter in Blacksburg demonstrated. "Hell, I’ve got a clean record, only a few traffic tickets, so I could go out to Clark Brothers"—a famous gun emporium that always does a brisk business.

It’s a way of life in Virginia, and much of America. And it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Those are the words of Howard Finerman.