PEOPLE ARE INTERPRETING this Peter Beinart column as saying that the public is softening on gun control because of the reduction in fear of crime. But if that’s true, then why are the Democrats fleeing the issue as the 2002 elections loom?

Well, read what Beinart actually said: “The biggest reason is America’s decade-long decline in crime, which on issue after issue–from gun control to mandatory sentencing–has tipped public opinion away from the early 1990s obsession with law and order toward a greater concern for civil liberties and individual rights.” Now I’m not sure if this is what Beinart meant, but one way of reading this is that people think of gun ownership as one of those “civil liberties and individual rights,” and that without fear of crime the Democrats can’t persuade them to part with it.

In which case there’s no contradiction at all.