Money to a political party is much like warm blood to a mammal; it keeps it alive and functioning, and it cannot survive without it. As such, both Republicans and Democrats have political hot buttons that they push to rev-up their base and increase contributions. For Republicans, supporting the 2nd Amendment and professing pro-life principles are the ticket to energizing their base and keeping contributions coming. For Democrats, promoting abortion, the LGBT agenda, and gun grabbing against law-abiding gun owners keep their coalition’s wallets open and activism up. The one thing both parties have in common, however, is that keeping these issues alive is more important than solving them.

This truth was on full display this week when the NRA came-out in favor of a regulatory change regarding bump stocks. Bump stocks are an accessory often used to make semi-automatic weapons, which are legally obtainable, operate like automatic weapons that are not legally purchasable under the National Firearms Act signed by President Ronald Reagan. The Las Vegas gunman used bump stocks on several semi-automatic weapons to expedite his rapidity of fire. As such, before liberals could even make a proposal, the NRA and gun rights activists came-out in support of banning bump stock usage by amending regulations issued by ATF under the National Firearms Act.

The day that the NRA came-out favoring the ban of bump stocks by the ATF, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer gave the proposal a tepid reception. Their reaction is proof of their politicization of the carnage on the Vegas Strip. The only statutory or regulatory change that would have made any difference, even if minor, in Las Vegas is the ban of bump stocks. The fact that Dems don’t want to support the NRA proposal proves that it’s all politics for them at this point. They have a more wide-sweeping agenda; they want to end the 2nd Amendment as we know it and significantly curtail access to firearms by law-abiding American citizens.

Their sweeping agenda was exposed in the tweets of their own 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton. Clinton tweeted on Monday that “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.” Living up to Rahm Emmanuel’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Hillary is pushing the Democrats’ agenda of gun confiscation by trashing the NRA over silencers. The reality in Vegas is that the gunshots ringing out did not cause people to run, people dying did. The concert was set to conclude with fireworks, and most of the people on stage and in the audience believed that the pyrotechnics had malfunctioned, not that they were under attack.

Democrats will not support the NRA proposal on bump stocks. They will not because it will cast the NRA in a good light, and that is not to Democrats’ political advantage. It doesn’t matter that the proposal makes sense, or is good for the country, it doesn’t fit into their anti-gun agenda and it wasn’t their idea. We are at a sad impasse in American politics, wherein what is good for America doesn’t matter as much to politicians as what is good for their respective political parties.