Yesterday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell -- a longtime advocate of gun-control laws -- offered a straightforward assessment of the prospects for passing any new restrictions or reforms anytime soon.

The upshot:

-- No one is going to be tackling this issue for the foreseeable future -- not until we fix the economy, the health-care system, and our energy problems.

-- Eventually there will be a conversation about this, somewhere down the road.

-- It would be nice to have a rational conversation about this.

Well, fat chance of that. But there's no doubt Rendell's proposals make a lot of common sense -- especially when, as Rendell notes, our police are outgunned by drug-running thugs using AK-47s. They're limited in scope (no confiscations, for example) and targeted to sensible approaches to real problems.

But try telling that to the Richard Poplawskis of the world.

E.J. Dionne has some further thoughts.