Yesterday I received yet another e-mail reporting on the results of this week’s elections.

This is an excerpt from an e-mail sent by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the PAC headed by Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly:

“While we were organizing nationally for the Colorado recalls, our Americans for Responsible Solutions members in Missouri were fighting back to stop a bill in the state legislature that would have made it illegal to enforce federal gun laws and legal to own a machine gun!

“A machine gun . . .

“But over 1,500 local ARS members took action and made their voices heard with local elected officials, and late last night we stopped the bill from becoming law . . . by one vote.

This victory demonstrates the importance of connecting our national determination with meaningful local action. Let us know that, when the time comes, we can count on you to get involved in your state and community.”

On the one hand, I applaud the efforts of this group in defeating this legislation.

But, on the other hand, I have to say that I am close to dumbfounded by the fact that a state legislature in this nation was prevented– by a single vote–from passing a bill that would have legalized machine guns!!! That does not seem to me to be a cause for celebration.

The Gun Lobby is always warning gun owners that any sort of “gun control” represents a slippery slope toward the federal confiscation of all guns.

But now we seem to be on not simply a rhetorical slippery slope but on a literal slippery slope titled steeply the other way.

When he was running for president in 1928, Herbert Hoover famously—or infamously given the economic collapse that followed shortly thereafter—promised voters “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”

I suppose that we can now look forward to a Far Right candidate’s promising voters “an underpaid but heavily armed teacher in every classroom and a howitzer in every garage.”

The GOP is on a slippery slope toward becoming the WTF party. And any Democratic lawmakers who are so gutless and clueless that they are voting with the GOP on measures comparable to this one legalizing machine guns are completely undeserving of the votes that have put them into office.