Even a crumb is a gift to the starving. I don’t want to be misinterpreted. But the seeming bipartisan rush to pass a ban on “bump stocks” is a joke. For clarity, “bump stocks” are the aftermarket devices which can be used to change a semi-automatic weapon into the functional equivalent of a machine gun. 

Back in December 2012, the day after the Newtown school massacre I got an email from a reader (TPM Reader SS) who talked about the ‘tactical’ turn which had taken place from the gun culture he grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s to the one that started coming into view in the 1990s. It’s shaped a lot of my thinking about the issue. Give it a read.

Here’s the key concluding line from Charlie Cook’s article on the Corker meltdown: “Last week’s news reduced the odds of the GOP retaining its majority from a good bet to even money.”

So Cook, one of the best known election predictors, says it’s 50/50 who controls the Senate after the 2018 midterm.

For the last nine months – in some way for the last 28 months – we’ve been told there was some breaking point coming where President Trump’s hold over the GOP, his supporters or some mix of the two was about to come undone. I flagged a few articles last night that suggested something like that might be coming. I’m not suggesting some major rupture is afoot. But for a few different reasons, I do think this blow up with Bob Corker may be something new and different.

This is for two specific reasons: the 2018 election and tax reform.

A few key articles to read for tomorrow (sub req.)

Laura Cutilletta joined the Law Center in May 2003. She is a prominent expert on gun laws and policy nationwide, and, in 2009, established programs to track, analyze, and report on firearms legislation and trends in all 50 states. Laura has worked for more than a decade with activists across the country and legislators at all levels of government, providing legal expertise and advice on legislative solutions to gun violence.

Laura will be joining us here in The Hive to discuss gun violence and gun control. Post your questions and join us on Wednesday! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.

“If Bob Corker has any honor, any decency he should resign immediately. He should not let those words stand, what he said about the President of the United States.” Those are Steve Bannon’s words from earlier this hour on Hannity. Corker should resign his seat in the Senate for criticizing the President.

Ronna Romney McDaniel, Chairperson of the RNC, explaining why President Trump cannot in any way be compared to Harvey Weinstein. “He didn’t have women coming forward.”

RNC chair says allegations about Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump are “not even comparable” https://t.co/blAHyKbYw8 https://t.co/UreeUn2Pp4

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) October 9, 2017

I just reread this Times OpEd “Will Liberals Give Weinstein the O’Reilly Treatment?” It’s by a staff writer at the Times opinion section, Bari Weiss. I’ve seen a number of articles like it. The subtext of all of them: While O’Reilly may have been run out of town on a rail for entirely legitimate reasons, a big part of the equation was not his behavior but politics and partisanship.

Will Weinstein get similar treatment?

Yesterday The DailyBeast wrote up another thread of the Russian election subversion campaign on social media. The latest is a Youtube web show by “Williams” and “Kalvin Johnson”. According to their legend, Williams and Kalvin are two BLM activists from Atlanta who supported Bernie Sanders and then supported Donald Trump in the general election over the “bitch” Hillary Clinton. The show seems to have gotten only a tiny number of views on Youtube but it trafficked much more widely on Facebook and other platforms.

Just a little background on this evening’s events on the immigration front.

Tonight the White House released a maximal set of demands for any deal to make DACA permanent. In fact, at least as Democrats understand the term, Trump is no longer even offering that. For that President Trump says he must have his wall funding, a crackdown on ‘sanctuary cities’, and a number of wholesale changes to the rules of immigration policy, specifically a new merit-based approach to issuing Green Cards and a focus on ‘ability to assimilate.’ There are at least half a dozen demands that are non-starters for a broad majority of Democrats – particularly Senate Democrats, which is where Trump will need some Democratic votes.

He’s fired.