I don't know if you remember this TV commercial that ran in 2010. It was repulsive. West Virgina Senator Joe Manchin is as pro-gun as a Senator can be. If the NRA had an A+++ rating -- especially for Democrats, who they rarely endorse -- he would get it, but a one hundred score is the best he could do. I don't know why he's a Democrat, either, after listening to what he stands for in that ad, but that being said, the shooting has loosened him up at least on magazine clips. Here's a little of what he said on Morning Joe.

“I just came with my family from deer hunting,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip. Sometimes you don’t get more than one shot anyway at a deer. It’s common sense. It’s time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.”

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” he said. “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

I don't really trust him, but the massacre at Sandy Hook is forcing some gun freaks (though not the terminally insane Louis Gohmert) to at least change some of their talking points.

Manchin also said more than gun control might be needed to prevent future mass shootings.

“This is bigger than just about the guns,” he said. “It’s about how we treat people with mental illness, how we intervene, how we give them the care they need, how we protect our schools.”

A conservative Democrat, Manchin famously used a rifle to shoot a piece of climate control legislation in a television ad. The National Rifle Association endorsed his reelection bid.

All 31 senators with an “A” rating from the NRA declined to appear on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” to discuss gun control, according to host David Gregory.

All those pro-gun Senators showed what cowards they are by refusing to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows to defend their lifelong positions and slavish backing of the NRA. Most NRA members actually are in favor of tighter gun controls, but then again, members don't receive huge amounts of money from the gun manufacturers NRA to support them.

Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are cowards in the face of the death of little children, shot down in kindergarten class. They took down their Facebook page and they're nowhere to be found in the media? Why? Because they can't defend the indefensible. I'm not sure why it's different this time, but I'm convinced this is the time we take on the NRA - and win:

Magazines that fed bullets into the primary firearm used to kill 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school would have been banned under state legislation that the National Rifle Association and gunmakers successfully fought.

The shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Adam Lanza, 20, used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle with magazines containing 30 rounds as his main weapon, said Connecticut State Police Lieutenant Paul Vance at a news conference today.

A proposal in March 2011 would have made it a felony to possess magazines with more than 10 bullets and required owners to surrender them to law enforcement or remove them from the state. Opponents sent more than 30,000 e-mails and letters to state lawmakers as part of a campaign organized by the NRA and other gun advocates, said Robert Crook, head of the Hartford- based Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, which opposed the legislation.

“The legislators got swamped by NRA emails,” said Betty Gallo, who lobbied on behalf of the legislation for Southport- based Connecticut Against Gun Violence. “They were scared of the NRA and the political backlash.”

Proponents abandoned the legislation, which drew opposition from gunmakers including Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) In addition to the e-mails and letters, more than 300 pro-gun activists, including many NRA members, attended a committee hearing to oppose it, said Gallo, a Hartford-based lobbyist for more than 35 years.

[...] Both sides in the debate disputed the role of high-capacity magazines in the Dec. 14 school shooting.
Crook said state legislation “wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“We already have a lot of good gun laws on the books,” Crook said. “You can’t control people who have never done anything wrong before and then just go off the deep end.”

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said in an interview that high-capacity magazines “made the crime all the more deadly” and called for limits.

The media office of the NRA didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment about the shooting or the law, or return phone messages left with an answering service.