Lets say for the sake of argument that the difference between a win and a loss in one or more of the swing states was the turnout among gun owners.
Would it be worth losing this election to take a stand on gun control?
Would you sacrifice the gun control issue for an election cycle when things are close?
I hope fervently that at least some of the political wisdom that comes out of this election is that HRC’s gun-control support cost her the election. NBC seemed to think so.
There were a thousand things that cost Hillary the election but it seems clear that pursuing gun control, particularly the more retarded forms of gun control (like an Assault Weapons Ban), will hurt you in swing states. She might have thrown away support (or increased opposition) in the general election in an effort to avoid a primary battle.
That’s been my position for awhile now. Even a lot of Democrats in the Western states are against gun control. America is a gun nut country. It’s not going to change. When Dems talk about gun control they just shoot themselves in the foot. If they dropped it there’s a faint possibility that single issue voters could come over, eventually.
I definitely saw a number of otherwise reasonable people who supported Trump “because 2A.” But I also saw quite a few who supported him because of “partial birth abortion,” which Clinton has no plans to change the law on as far as I can tell.
I don’t know one way or the other regarding Clinton, but here in Washington State I-1491 appears to have had relatively broad support.
Maybe she should have taken your advice and do a photo op with a rifle of some sort.
I think it’s safe to say this prediction did not come to pass.
Even gun nuts might want the actual nuts to not get their hands on guns.
E.g Montana has not voted for a Democratic President since 1992, so they are a “red state.” Yet their Governor and Lt. Gov (who apparently doesn’t need to be the same party) are Democrats, as is one Senator, and the past Senators have been mostly blue (current Republican has been in office since 2015, prior to that it was 7 Democrats dating back to 1913. I do think this is a losing issue for the Democrats on the national level, even if not everybody is a single-issue voter.
The one pic of Trump with a rifle that I’ve seen, he seems very uncomfortable with it. Maybe it’s just me, but his stance seemed off, like he’s holding a snake.
Democrats need to learn that there is no advantage in even mentioning gun control at all. Almost everyone that is for it has picked a side already and they aren’t going anywhere. OTOH, there are independent, single-issue voters that take threats of gun control, especially illogical and emotionally based gun control, extremely seriously and it can shift their vote on its own. It is also counter-productive because it tends to cause guns and ammo sales to shoot through the roof (no pun intended) when such threats are made.
The same is true with Republicans and abortion and probably even same sex marriage these days. It is fine to have personal opinions but those types of issues are so perpetual, divisive and intractable that it is unlikely that a broadly acceptable compromise will ever be reached. They just need to be quiet about those types of issues and say they are out of the scope of their political platform.
Believe it or not, there are real problems that need to be addressed that aren’t divisive and intractable especially in less trendy areas like infrastructure, foreign policy and domestic economics. Hint: those don’t include things like gun control or causes of the month like bathrooms for transsexual people. It is a distracting smokescreen that takes the focus away from much harder but much more important issues.
Although I don’t generally like Clinton, I would have been out there actively campaigning for her in order to stop Trump - if it weren’t for her stance on firearms.
So that’s one data point for you.
Mrs. Clinton, if gun control was more important to you than winning the election, I hope you’re happy because you got what you wanted.
There was even more at stake than just run-of-the-mill gun control, there was the Supreme Court to consider. The gun control crew here was positively salivating at the possibility of getting the Supremes on board, just a small sample of the groups rubbing their hands together in anticipation. Of course the single-issue voters were going to be mobilized for that.
But that’s not why she lost. She lost because of this issue with these guys, that issue with those guys, and so on. People were looking for a reason not to vote for her. She almost got beat for the nomination by a socialist independent, and might have anyway if the superdelegates weren’t in the bag for her from the start, according to the telltale DNC e-mails. Gun control surely didn’t help, but there’s no one thing you can point to and say yep, that’s the reason.
Yep. I was wrong about her tacking back to center on guns. And she lost the election.
On the bright side, I think we can anticipate that Heller won’t be overturned in the near future.
They know this:
Hillary especially should know this:
I’m kinda in the same boat.
It was the one thing that could have moved me from holding my nose to actively supporting her to defeat Trump.
Sure there were a thousand reasons why she lost but she lost by razor thin margins in enough swing states that I think guns could have won her the election. I think she would have picked up Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan with a more pro-gun stance (fer fuck’s sake how do you lose in a state where the Republicans are lead poisoning the children).
I am not sure what else you include in “causes of the month,” but “bathrooms for transgender people” didn’t become an issue because of Hillary or Democrats.
No, sorry. The GOP has aligned itself with the NRA and vise versa. My single issue gun voter friends always and only vote Repub even if the Dem candidate seems just as supportive of gun rights as the GOP guy.
Trump was no friend to gun owners, and Hillary’s proposals were modest. Didnt matter.
Yeah? How many of those single issue gun voters do you know? I know hundreds. Literally. Hundreds.
Some of them are hard core conservatives. The rest are at least as apathetic about politics and voting as the general population. I would rate their level of voting activity well below average. Unless they think their second amendment rights are at risk.
Then they vote and they tend to vote Republican because the Democrat is almost always the one threatening to truncate their rights.
Then they go out there and vote for the Republican.
Are the people opposed to “gun control” against anything? Like more responsible gun ownership? I.E.: More waiting time between application and purchase? More regulations to keep away the mentally ill? That sort of thing?