6 reasons why President Obama will defeat the NRA and win universal background checks

Something is going to happen this session in the US Congress that hasn’t happened in more than a decade: The National Rifle Association (NRA) is going to lose on a top priority issue. Here are six reasons why President Obama will win a victory on universal background checks.

4. NRA won’t be the only big spender anymore

In the past, the NRA dramatically outspent gun control groups, sometimes by as much as 20-1. Lately, though, that has begun to change. New York's mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has put his money where his gun-control mouth is, and supported candidates who favor reasonable gun limits. His political action committee, Independence USA, spent more than $8 million to support gun-control candidates last election (closing in on the $17 million the NRA spent). Bloomberg-backed candidates won three of the six races where his superPAC was involved.

Perhaps more important, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was horrifically injured in a mass shooting two years ago, has pledged to raise $20 million for the elections of 2014 – to match what the NRA spent last November.

The money game on guns may be even for the first time in modern history.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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