Mary Rose Corkery
An MSNBC analyst said Friday he believes President Joe Biden could potentially lead an age of progressive activism.
“I know we’ve been talking about this for several weeks here. You know, the Roosevelt era to the Reagan era. Are we on the verge of a new activist Progressive era led in an unlikely way by Joe Biden? I think that’s not impossible,” MSNBC analyst John Heilemann said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The president announced executive actions regarding gun control on Thursday from the White House.
The actions follow several recent shootings, including incidents in Boulder, Colorado and Atlanta, Georgia. The administration released several first action items on Thursday to target “the gun violence public health epidemic,” according to a White House fact sheet.
The actions include a deadline for the Justice Department (DOJ) to unveil “model ‘red flag’ legislation for states” in 60 days and a deadline of 30 days for the DOJ to release a proposal meant to aid in halting the increase of “ghost guns,” the fact sheet said.
The term “ghost guns” refers to handmade or assembled firearms that are not required to carry a serial number.
Heilemann said Americans’ wanting increased government involvement regarding public health and the economy hasn’t likely been this big since the end of World War II. The MSNBC analyst said the desire is a reason why there’s bipartisan backing across the country of the COVID-19 relief package and Biden’s infrastructure bill.
“That’s a big thing, a paradigm kind of shift,” the MSNBC analyst said.
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The MSNBC analyst said “guns have become largely a cultural issue and not so much an issue about economics or government intervention.”
Heilemann added that conversely, many gun supporters have more become even more deeply ingrained in their belief in the right to bear arms.
“So on one hand, I am optimistic in the way you are when I see the collapse of the NRA, the rise of the anti-gun activists. The fact that in the Democratic Party now, there is no debate about this anymore, you have to be on the side of sensible gun safety measures in the Democratic Party,” Heilemann said.
Heilemannn said Republicans‘ doubling down on guns is what they do with “a lot of these hot-button cultural issues.”
“That cultural overlay means that it’s not gonna, we’re not gonna see as, I think, as easy a shift in some ways towards acceptance of gun safety legislation as we’ve seen to the embrace of big government,” Heilemann said.
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