a memorial service for the 12 people killed in monday s mass shooting at the washington naval yard will begin in about an hour. right now we re back with our brain trust. esther arma, political commentator and play wright. peter sudoman, senior writer at victoria, i want to start with you. president obama will address today s gathering later this afternoon. last night while speaking at the congressional black caucus dinner the president again made an impassioned plea for reforming the nation s gun laws. let s take a listen. as long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun, then we ve got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children. we ve got to be ones who are willing to do more work to make it harder. victoria, why is it still so difficult to sell gun reform legislation in this country? i think the scope is at issue
he incentive here, it s a longer term incentive. so i disagree that the end game isn t necessarily defunding obamacare. they know that won t happen. i think they have the eye on the 2014 midterm election because there are a couple of very tight senate races especially with four moderate democrats who know that if they vote to support obamacare, that they may lose their seat because of that. mary landrieu in louisiana so i think they know this is just rhetoric, but they re pumping up the base so they come out in force in 2014. and esther, is this really all about individual political survival? i think it s a combination of that, but i also think we re at the point where president obama s rhetoric needs to be matched with a strategy by the democrats to inform the american people about the ways in which obama care is going to serve them. because i agree with francesca the end game is actually keeping an eye on the election.
right now, it s really difficult to use this as a jumping off point. i think that s a big part of the reason why harry reid has said that he doesn t have the votes and is not going to be moving gun control legislation any time soon. esther, chicago has one of the hardest hit cities when it comes to gun violence. at least 20 people have been shot in that city since friday. today is sunday. let s take a quick listen to what mayor rahm emanuel had to say about that. we cannot allow children in the city of chicago, and we will not allow children in the city of chicago, to have their youthfulness, their optimism, their hope, taken from them. now, we tend to look to legislation to solve problems like this. like indemmendemmic gun violenc. should we be focusing on root issues that tend to breed more violent neighborhoods? i think it s actually a combination of things. i think the cancer is always this idea that the mass shooting, the response is always, well, there s no single
to defund obamacare. he has everybody worked up. top letting ted cruz set our agenda. this law is not worth causing a shutdown over. we re not going to let anyone especially flikt economic pain on millions of our own people just to make an ideological point. i can t win this fight. people like ted cruz who as far as i m concerned carrying out a fraud with the people. only you can win this fight. public battle over government shutdown and obamacare continues today. and let s get right to our brain trust for more on that. esther is a political commentator. victoria is a professor. and peter is a senior editor at reason magazine. thank you all for being here. so peter, i want to start with you. at last night s congressional black caucus dinner, the president lit into republicans for their actions. let s take a listen.
back in the senators home states who really wants to house these prisoners? where will they go? who will pay for it? the looming questions. bob, what s different now? the president has hit this drum before. did not work out but we re in a different year, different time? we are, but the big question remains, as robert pointed out, what do you do with the ones left? when i first started covering this at the beginning, they ended up with almost 800 detainees as they call them, prisoners of war is what we insisted on calling them. they re down to, what, 169? something like that. but these are hard-core cases. cases that might not fit into a trial under american jurisprudence or because they don t have an acceptable country to go to. that is still the big problem. go ahead, esther? you want to pipe in? the big issue what the two gentlemen mentioned, which is, where do they go? a little reported story by the associated press was that the house armed services committee just passed a