# The Democratic Party should drop the gun control issue
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [November 7, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495 "2004-11-07T14:28:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/21 "2004-11-07T18:13:38Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#):
>
> 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.”
Case in point. Hits many Brady-buttons that punches several “raw nerves” of the pro-gun crowd.
However, like the perrenial optimist shovelling his way to the bottom of the manure pile in search of a pony, **Hentor** does have a semi-valid point buried in all of the highlighted rhetoric: there _is_ room for smart, pro-control moves on the part of gun-owners.
But having Presidential Candidates photo-op with the Four Horsesmen of the Gun Control Apocalypse is not going to convince Gun-Owning Gus to vote for him.
---
### Author:  [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/22 "2004-11-07T18:15:02Z")
I’m a registered Democrat and have to say that I agree, on the average, with most of the Democratic parties ideals, with a few exceptions. One of those is gun control.
Here’s a statement to the democratic party leaders:
It’s possible to be democratic, liberal, AND love guns!
Proof? Vermont and Maine. Both states are consistantly democratic, and have a good portion of people who are fairly liberal, yet both states are FULL of people who love guns and hunting. If you told them you were there to take away their guns, they’d shoot you with said guns. Yet, they are still, on the whole, democratic states. But with all these gun nuts running around, thr crime rate must be through the roof! We have two of the lowest crime rates in the country.
Guns don’t cause crime, guns don’t kill people. DO they make it easier to commit crime and kill? Possibly, but if someone is dead set on robbing a store or killing their boss, not being able to get an M-16 with armor piercing rounds ain’t gonna stop them.
---
### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/23 "2004-11-07T18:24:58Z")
> [@rjung](#):
>
> 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.
If it’s periodic, it is more annoying than a driver’s test.
Here’s the thing, this licensing isn’t going to do anything but make people who don’t like guns feel very slightly better about Joe Schmoe having one. It won’t change crime or accidents or anything at all. So what does that make it? A waste of time, an attempt to “control” (there’s that word again), to interfere, to make things harder for no purpose, and, because we are dealing in some few cases with paranoid persons, to get a list of all gun owners. There’s no point in it other than as a sop to people who really believe that guns are too dangerous but don’t have the political capital to ban them.
Do a mental exercise. Imagine that the Republicans start saying that they aren’t trying to ban all abortions, they just want the names of everyone who has one. What would your reaction be?
---
### Author:  [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/24 "2004-11-07T18:28:44Z")
> [@rjung](#):
>
> My problem is that IMO, the NRA considers then the slightest legislation regarding guns to be “gun control.”
Well, it is. But the NRA does _not_ think that all gun control is bad. This is a tired line the Democrats need to drop, because it automatically puts the issue into separate corners of a political fight.
> [@rjung](#):
>
> 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.
Sounds smarmy and condescending to me.
> [@rjung](#):
>
> 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.
Has already been used in several jurisdictions in an “incremental encroachment” strategy to enact even tighter controls.
> [@rjung](#):
>
> 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).
Unlike liberals and Democrats who are currently screaming their heads off that the 11-state opposition to Gay Marriage is a prelude to Gay Death Camps run by the religious right.
> [@rjung](#):
>
> 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.
I agree. How about this:
1. We have any prospective gun owners sign a federal affadavit asserting that they aren’t:
a) Ex-felon
b) Substance abuser
c) Expatriate
d) Mentally deficient
e) Dishonorably Discharged from the military
f) Spouse abuser
2. We then check that person’s identification against a federal database of the proscribed class of people listed above, a-f. In certain locations, the federal search can be augumented by state databases as well.
Does that suit you?
---
### Author:  [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/25 "2004-11-07T18:29:59Z")
> [@rjung](#):
>
> My problem is that IMO, the NRA considers then the slightest legislation regarding guns to be “gun control.”
>
> . . . .
> 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.
Not really. Automatic weapons are unlawful, the Brady Act is in no danger of being overturned, and you can’t own any gun in New York City, Washington D.C., and other jurisdictions. These are regulations that the NRA has more or less given up on (not saying they wouldn’t like to overturn them, just that they’re not optimistic about it happening anytime soon). Guns are more heavily regulated than at many (most?) times in the U.S. past (look at a 1910 Sears catalog – you could buy your revolver, and ammunition, for $3.50 through the mail). The NRA is fighting a rearguard action against **more** regulation, given that we already have considerably more than “slight” regulation.
Also . . . that which is licensed, i.e., contingent on state approval, is arguably not a right at all. Driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege (as the courts have found in upholding DWI laws that provide for automatic forfeiture of your license if you simply refuse to take a sobriety test, regardless of whether you’re actually drunk). If the Second Amendment provides an individual, personal right to gun ownership, I can understand its defenders being aghast at the modest proposal that they prove themselves worthy of qualifying for such right.
---
### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/26 "2004-11-07T18:38:39Z")
The Democrats have (wisely) been distancing themselves from the gun control issue ever since it cost Al Gore the election. The recent hoo-hah over renewal of the Ugly Gun Ban was a (partially successful) Republican effort to put the Democrats back on the spot.
---
### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/27 "2004-11-07T18:48:57Z")
> [@Huerta88](#):
>
> (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).
The problem is that a Democrat who says that he only wants to ban “assault weapons” is greeted with the same skepticism as a Republican who says that he only wants to ban “late term abortion” (i.e. he is assumed to be spinning BS in order to hide a more extremist real agenda). Unfortunately, given the past records of each party, this skepticism is all too well founded.
---
### Author:  [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/28 "2004-11-07T19:20:06Z")
I’m also interested to hear more Democrats answer this. I asked a [similar](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=81718) question after the last election, in response to this article:
[Democrats Back Off On Firearms](http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010813/3540770s.htm)
Due to the rancorous nature of the 2000 election (hard to remember amidst all the current screaming and shouting, perhaps :rolleyes: ), it didn’t get much real attention before turning into yet another gun control debate.
---
### Author:  [@Gamaliel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gamaliel)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/29 "2004-11-07T19:44:55Z")
I don’t see the point of dropping gun control, I just see it as one among many useless suggestions that the Dems move to the right. Becoming Republican lite will always be a losing proposition because people will just vote for the real thing.
People who really think that John Kerry wants to take their guns away from their cold dead fingers will not respond to the Dems dropping gun control by voting Dem, they will just look at it as a tactic and think the Dems still secretly covet their firearms. And the Dems run the risk of both losing the suburban swing voters who support sane minor gun control methods and looking like a bunch of inauthentic flip-floppers.
---
### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/30 "2004-11-07T19:46:03Z")
The problem with ‘reasonable’ restrictions on guns is that people worry with good reason that it will be a thin wedge that will constantly get hammered in deeper.
Specifically, gun registration opponents worry that once the government knows exactly who has a gun, it will make it a lot easier to ban them. This isn’t a crazy fear, either. There is lots of evidence that this can happen in other countries.
Here in Canada, we’ve suffered through successive rounds of increasingly restrictive gun controls. Each time, the proponent of these laws claim that this is all they want, and they’ll be happy. Then the law gets passed, and before you can blink they’re pushing for the next round of restrictions. So opponents develop a ‘No more!’ attitude and refuse to consider even reasonable restrictions.
---
### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/31 "2004-11-07T21:41:03Z")
> [@Gamaliel](#):
>
> I don’t see the point of dropping gun control, I just see it as one among many useless suggestions that the Dems move to the right. Becoming Republican lite will always be a losing proposition because people will just vote for the real thing.
>
> People who really think that John Kerry wants to take their guns away from their cold dead fingers will not respond to the Dems dropping gun control by voting Dem, they will just look at it as a tactic and think the Dems still secretly covet their firearms. And the Dems run the risk of both losing the suburban swing voters who support sane minor gun control methods and looking like a bunch of inauthentic flip-floppers.
I disagree. As others have stated, there are a lot of people who vote for Republicans solely on the gun issue. Your ‘suburbian swing voters’ who would vote for a Democrat would still vote for a Democrat. The single-issue (guns) ones will have less reason to vote for the Republican.
The way I see it is this: Liberals, including Democrats, have a lot of issues they care deeply about. I’ve enumerated some of these in the OP. I believe that crime is not caused by personal gun ownership, but by many social factors. In a good economy, crime goes down. Educated people tend to commit fewer crimes, especially violent crimes, than uneducated people. The Democratic Party wants to create more jobs and to spend more money on education. If I were King, these would be very high on my ‘to do list’. Health care would be there as well, at or near the top. I think that these good things can be more easily accomplished by having Democrats in office. But first, they have to be elected. By giving up the one issue, they would be in a much better position to carry on with the other, _much_ more important issues.
Although there have been a couple of comments that threatened to turn this into a gun-control debate, I’d like to thank everyone for generally keeping to the OP’s intent of debating whether ‘the thing should be dropped’ instead of ‘the thing’.
**Evil Captor** : I see you started a similar thread. Was there something that prompted it? (Nothing in particular promted me to start this one.) Or is it a case of “great minds think alike”? 😉
---
### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/32 "2004-11-07T23:45:47Z")
Democrats don’t have to change a thing. Single issue gun lover voters are generally the very same people as the single issue anti-abortion voters who are the very same people as the single issue anti-gay marriage voters who are the very same people as the single issue prayer in public school voters. Four single issues, and if one is near and dear to you, chances are the others are as well. The Democrats changing policy on sensible gun control, which the majority of Americans want, would not win many votes at all. What will win votes is to be consistent in favoring the sensible side of the debate on these issues as well as those issues that are actually important. On January 20, 2009 George W. Bush will leave office in disgrace after 5 years of folly in Iraq and attempting to gut Social Security. The Democrats are not going to have to pander to the gun lobby in order to reclaim their rightful place in power. In fact, if the requirement for paper trails in electronic voting was in place in 2004, we’d be writing Bush’s political obituary four years earlier.
---
### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/33 "2004-11-07T23:48:41Z")
What exactly is so bad about the Brady Law? What’s wrong with a five day waiting period while someone does a background check, to make sure that some nutjob doesn’t get a hold of a weapon when he goes off his meds?
After all, Sarah Brady and her husband were NOT Democrats-they were Republicans, and the person who inspired them to push the Brady Law was none other than John Hinkley Jr, Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin.
If we’re talking about the gun extremists (not to be confused with the vast majority of gun owners, I’m talking about people who say, think that they should be allowed to carry full on grenade launchers to the supermarket) worship any president, it would be Ronald Reagan. So wouldn’t THEY want to keep firearms from the likes of Hinkley-wannabes?\*
\*I just used this as the most extreme example I could find-I admit that I do not know much about guns, and don’t feel too strongly about them one way or the other.
---
### Author:  [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/34 "2004-11-07T23:51:20Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#):
>
> What exactly is so bad about the Brady Law? What’s wrong with a five day waiting period while someone does a background check, to make sure that some nutjob doesn’t get a hold of a weapon when he goes off his meds?
As a nutjob who has 3 restrictions against purchasing firearms, on meds or off meds, I must say that is quite unfair to say about us nutjobs.
Other than that, I agree with the general premise of this thread, it is a bad issue. I think most people can agree to an assault rifle ban, and leave it at that. Some fights you just can’t win.
---
### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/35 "2004-11-08T00:00:48Z")
> [@Zagadka](#):
>
> As a nutjob who has 3 restrictions against purchasing firearms, on meds or off meds, I must say that is quite unfair to say about us nutjobs.
>
> Other than that, I agree with the general premise of this thread, it is a bad issue. I think most people can agree to an assault rifle ban, and leave it at that. Some fights you just can’t win.
I appologize if I seemed to be making snide remarks about mental illness. Especially as I have known it myself.
What I’m talking about is, who would have an objection to keeping weapons away from individuals who could NOT be trusted to be responsible with them? I’m talking about people like Hinkley, who was stalking Jodi Foster. Someone who has a history of violence and being unstable and a criminal background.
---
### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/36 "2004-11-08T00:58:20Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> Single issue gun lover voters are generally the very same people as the single issue anti-abortion voters who are the very same people as the single issue anti-gay marriage voters who are the very same people as the single issue prayer in public school voters. Four single issues, and if one is near and dear to you, chances are the others are as well.
This doesn’t make any sense. If you’re a single-issue voter, that issue is the deciding one.
As for people holding the positions you’re listing, how about libertarians? As a whole, they are pro gun rights, pro abortion rights, pro gay marriage and anti-prayer in schools. Badnarik apparently got nearly 400,000 votes nationwide in a year when a lot of people were scared away from voting for a third party. Now, would Democrats pick up all of those votes? Of course not. But they would pick up some, especially in tight races.
My county in Ohio was almost even divided between Bush and Kerry. Gun ownership here is over 50%. That’s huge. Past polls have shown that gun owners are less trustful of the government than non-gun owners. They aren’t going to believe you when you say you just want “reasonable” measures.
As for Democrats not having to change a thing and voting irregularities being what turned this election, I can only say fine. If that’s what you believe, you’re welcome to it. Interesting how those precincts that don’t have electronic voting still went to Bush. It must be a conspiracy.
---
### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/37 "2004-11-08T00:59:11Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#):
>
> I appologize if I seemed to be making snide remarks about mental illness. Especially as I have known it myself.
>
> What I’m talking about is, who would have an objection to keeping weapons away from individuals who could NOT be trusted to be responsible with them? I’m talking about people like Hinkley, who was stalking Jodi Foster. Someone who has a history of violence and being unstable and a criminal background.
I hate to shoot you down, **Guin** ( 😉 ) But that’s probably outside the scope of this thread.
---
### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/38 "2004-11-08T02:10:31Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> If it’s periodic, it is more annoying than a driver’s test.
Dunno where you are, but I have to re-take my driver’s test every ten years or so, just to prove I still have a basic level of competency in handling a motor vehicle.
I still don’t see why applying something similar to guns is so onerous. “Hey, this is a powerful and potentially dangerous thing, we just want to make sure you can operate it safely, mmkay?” Cars, airplanes, pyrotechnics, ocean liners… guns?
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> Do a mental exercise. Imagine that the Republicans start saying that they aren’t trying to ban all abortions, they just want the names of everyone who has one. What would your reaction be?
Invasion of privacy, since I can’t imagine how someone having an abortion is a risk to anyone outside the woman herself and the fetus. Poor analogy, IMO.
> [@Sam Stone](#):
>
> The problem with ‘reasonable’ restrictions on guns is that people worry with good reason that it will be a thin wedge that will constantly get hammered in deeper.
You mean like a woman’s right to an abortion? 😉 Or do Republicans oppose “wedge” restrictions only when it’s for something near and dear to their hearts?
---
### Author:  [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/39 "2004-11-08T02:10:38Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> On January 20, 2009 George W. Bush will leave office in disgrace after 5 years of folly in Iraq and attempting to gut Social Security. The Democrats are not going to have to pander to the gun lobby in order to reclaim their rightful place in power. In fact, if the requirement for paper trails in electronic voting was in place in 2004, we’d be writing Bush’s political obituary four years earlier.
You’ll forgive me if I look at your record for prognostication thus far and regard this current prediction with some skepticism.
---
### Author:  [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2004, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495/40 "2004-11-08T02:32:08Z")
> [@rjung](#):
>
> Cars, airplanes, pyrotechnics, ocean liners… guns?
It’s like an IQ test – which of these five doesn’t belong in the group? Yep, guns, the only item mentioned for which access to it is the subject of an explicit guarantee in the U.S. Constitution.
Hey, free speech is fine and good, but speech can be pretty dangerous stuff; look what that Mussolini fella did with it. We’re not **taking away** your speech, we just think it needs to be subject to a little prior restraint and licensing. Yeah.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-democratic-party-should-drop-the-gun-control-issue/273495.md?page=3)