This is IMHO, but I can see it turning into a debate.
Senator Kerry stated several times that he is a gun owner, and had himself photographed goose hunting. The message was clear: “I don’t want to take away your guns.”
Gun control is a very divisive issue on these boards and in this country. I am in favour of abortion rights, keeping theology out of science, health care for everyone, more money for education, more cooperation with the UN and the world, recognition of gay rights (including marriage), against capital punishment, etc. I’m a Liberal. (I was registered as non-partisan in California.) Given a better job (like my last one) I would have gladly paid higher taxes to help support the programmes I favour. But I also like to shoot. For many people, gun control is the single issue that decides for whom they’ll vote; just as abortion rights is the single most important issue for others.
I think that many people who otherwise agree with the Democratic platform will still vote for a Republican just because they fear the Democrats will seek to gut the Second Ammendment. I and others here have said that gun control != crime control, and that gun control laws are knee-jerk attempts to appear as if the politician is “doing something” to fight crime. Joe Sixpack may be out of a job, but he’ll still vote for a Republican because he wants to keep his guns. As has been seen here, there are a lot of Americans who oppose more gun laws; and I think many gun owners would be more inclined to vote for a Democrat if gun control were not an issue.
I think the Democratic Party should step away from their anti-gun rhetoric. If they remove gun control as an issue, they’ll have a better chance to focus on the issues that really matter.
This is not a gun control thread. The issue is not gun control itself, but whether the Democratic Party should de-emphasise the issue.
I think the perception that the Democrats want to attack gun rights is sold by the GOP… everyone knows its a losing ticket to support gun restrictions.
There were plenty of Democrats who were pushing for the extension of the law that banned “scary looking” semiautomatic rifles and large magazines.
Considering that many Democrats acknowledge that support for gun control has cost them many house seats in past elections, one wonders why they just don’t drop it as a campaign issue.
In some liberal areas, gun control is used as political club against Republican candidates, and it works if the area is sufficiently liberal. I used to live in an area like that, they also wanted to ban nuclear weapons by local law.
Yeah, like yourself I’m a liberal who is, at best, a lukewarm advocate of gun control. I think a free and safe society could exist with or without an armed populace, and that many recent forms of gun control (like the late assualt rifle ban) did nothing useful.
I agree with Hyperelastic that the dems have to choose their battles, but some liberal values are simply too import to me to ignore. I’m not happy, for example, that the fight for gay unions may be sacrificed. But gun control is something that I’d happily drop if it’d gain support in other areas.
No. I think this issue is like many others. Most people think assault weapons and armor piercing bullets are not necessary. I think there is room to drive a wedge here just as the conservatives have done on so many issues. Send out fliers that tell people the republicans want the most extreme versions of weaponary, just like they sent out fliers saying we want everyone to be gay (that’s hyperbole on my part, obviously, but not too far from what they did). Let people know that most Democrats, like most people, don’t have a problem with hunting. Redraw the debate, but don’t abandon our principles.
We must make our side clear, because there are some uneasy alliances on the other side, and things are going to get pretty warm from them as Bush and the right try to move on their “mandate.”
Trying to keep with the OP’s theme of not weighing in on the underlying issues . . . I would kind of handicap it that easing the Dem position on abortion would provide more marginal votes than weakening the party line on guns.
Reasons:
(1) while there are some outspoken and absolutist Dems. on the gun issue, there are also those who don’t toe the Sarah Brady line, and the party seems to tolerate this. Abortion, on the other hand, appears to have become a third rail for the Dems. – while there used to be pro-life Dems., there aren’t any that I can think of in Congress now, and it’s inconceivable at this point that anyone could become or contend for the Dem. Pres./V.P. candidate without genuflecting to NARAL and adopting its platform verbatim. It makes the Dems. appear more absolute and doctrinaire on this point, whereas the Republicans seem to tolerate some dissent (and even their scions, while keeping the pro-life plank in the platform, seem personally far-from-rock-solid on this issue, a la the varioius comments by Barbara and Laura Bush).
(2) Similarly, the Dems. have a “moderate” (or pseudo-moderate) answer to the gun issue – hey, we’re hunters, we’re photographed out after geese, I’d never do anything to restrict sportsmen’s legitimate rights to safe, sanely-regulated guns. (Never mind that this drives the Second Amendment crowd crazy; it at least sounds like a middle-ground, non-absolutist answer). Kerry can be photographed hunting geese and still be acknowledged as generally solid by the gun-control lobby. Think he could make a token goodwill stop, just the one, at, say, a Respect Life rally?
(3) I’d say the number of religious/conservative voters who are pro-NRA but don’t care about abortion is less than the number of them who are pro-life but don’t care about guns. This is just subjective, but I’d say the Catholics I’ve met, for instance (practicing and not so practicing) are, while not uniformly pro-life, significantly more likely to vote on abortion than on guns. And they inhabit a lot of those swing states, whose politicians (a la Casey) used to be, occasionally, pro-life, and these voters may feel their voices are being ignored.
C’mon Huerta. There are damn few Dems who are one-issue voters on gun control, but there are huge numbers of voters who go Repub on that one issue.
Whereas, there are TONS who are single-issue voters on abortion, on BOTH sides.
Upshot, we can dump gun control with impunity. We lose thousands, perhaps millions, of voters if we back off abortion to any extent. Your ideas would be a disaster for the Dems.
I’m not guaranteeing it would work. But where would angry Dems go if the Dems didn’t dump abortion rights (that won’t happen) but let it be known that, say, you could make it on to the Dem. ticket even if you weren’t uniformly on-board with NARAL’s platform? They can hardly go GOP.
Though he pulled a slick move with the AWB, W. is NOT the friend to gun owners he’s made out to be!
I have said on these boards many, MANY times that a pro-gun Democrate could beat the pants off George Bush.
And by pro-gun I mean believing that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, one that forbids bans and restrictive carry laws upon law abiding people.
And if one more person tells me Howard Dean is pro-gun, I’m going to puke!
I know many libertarians who are swayed by the gun issue. Many moderate and liberal Republicans are swayed by it.
My husband didn’t want to vote for Kerry because of guns (he finally changed his mind, but not because he became any happier with Kerry).
I have met quite a few single-issue gun voters in my life and all of them were pro-gun.
I am pro-gun but I figured that Kerry’s ability to do anything detrimental was so tiny it wasn’t worth worrying about.
So, Democrats, lose the gun control rhetoric. Don’t just lose it, trumpet that you’re losing it. Say that you “just didn’t get it” the first time around. Gun lovers would be ecstatic and gun lovers flourish in the red states.
They would vote third party without a hint of a qualm.
The Democratic party’s affection for gun-control is, at least to me, completely opposite from what the party claims to stand for. The Democrats want to be about personal freedom to be and love and marry who you choose and to have children only when you choose and to speak and dress and worship how you choose. And then they say, “Yeah, but guns? Nuh uh.”
Pay attention to the way gay marriage activists argue for gay marriage. “How does it affect you? You don’t have to enter into a gay marriage!” “How is a loving commitment between two adults a threat to you?”
Now pay attention to the way gun activists argue for gun rights. “How does it affect you? You don’t have to own a gun!” “How is a gun in the hands of a responsible adult a threat to you?”
Arguing that not all gun owners are responsible is right up there with arguing that not all gay marriages would be loving. Yes, it can happen, but it isn’t the default, and it’s insulting as hell to act like it is. (Not making accusations against anyone in this thread.)
For this to work, I think it would have to be seen as more than just a tactical maneuver. They’d need to actually integrate it into their platforms and campaign rhetoric:
“Democrats believe in being tough on crime, but not at the expense of the individual liberties of law-abiding citizens. We want to put criminals in jail, but that doesn’t mean depriving people of a fair trial, allowing the police to kick in the doors of people’s houses without a proper warrant, or taking away the right of self-defense from honest, law-abiding people of any race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or creed.”
“What about the people who live in bad neighborhoods, because they can’t afford to live in good neighborhoods, who work two jobs so that someday they can move out and move up and make a better life for their children. Don’t we owe it to them to give them a helping hand, with good public schools, health insurance for everyone, and safer cities? And since the police can’t be everywhere, don’t these honest, hardworking people deserve the right to defend themselves just as much as the well-off and well-connected, who can afford to live in gated communities, and hire armed bodyguards, or even pull strings to get permits to carry guns?”
My problem is that IMO, the NRA considers then the slightest legislation regarding guns to be “gun control.”
I mean, I’ve never shot a gun in my life, have no desire to shoot guns, but can certainly understand why someone would want to have a big ol’ ass-kickin’ collection of rifles, pistols, and whatever for his own security. All I ask is for a periodic licensing requirement, just to show me that “Yes, I know what I’m doing.” Nothing more annoying than a driver’s license, and probably wouldn’t require anything more troublesome than a written test.
Of course, the moment I suggest this, every NRA member within a ten-mile radius comes out of the woodwork, screaming bloody murder about government bureaucracies and Orwellian overtones and secret UN plots to target gun owners first when the evil one-world government coup takes place (hopefully not until after Christmas, but who knows).
I don’t want to take anyone’s guns away; I just want to treat them with a tad more care than we treat a six-pack of beer. I’m still trying to figure out where that puts me on the whole issue.