Democrats signal wariness on gun laws

Gun issue losing potency
The record of the past several years shows that gun control as a motivating issue has lost some of the power it once had, both for proponents and opponents of gun regulation:

• In Virginia’s 2005 gubernatorial election, Republican Jerry Kilgore touted his gun ownership and Republicans criticized the action Democratic candidate Tim Kaine took as mayor of Richmond to rent buses to send activists to the Million Mom March, an event staged in Washington, D.C., in 2000 by gun control groups. But the issue didn’t seem to help Kilgore as he lost to Kaine by nearly 6 points.
• In last year’s confirmation battle over President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., criticized Alito for dissenting from two of his appeals court colleagues in 1996 who’d upheld a federal law banning possession of machine guns. But the issue did not loom large in the effort to defeat Alito; he won Senate confirmation with the support of four Democrats as well as all but one Republican.

In the 2004 and 2006 elections, Democrats seemed to want to signal that their support for some regulation of guns did not mean they were hostile to lawful gun owners.

In the 2004 campaign Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry made two highly publicized hunting excursions, one in Iowa in 2003 and the other in the swing state of Ohio, only a few days before the election.  Kerry’s Ohio goose hunting event was intended to give voters “a better sense of John Kerry, the guy,” Democratic strategist Mike McCurry told reporters.

Republican consultant Chris LaCivita said, “Since 2001 Democrats have increasingly downplayed gun control as an issue because it has not had the impact they wanted.”

A change from the Clinton Era
It’s a decided change from the politics of the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton fought with congressional Republicans over gun regulations. In the short run, Clinton won: Congress passed the Brady bill, which required a waiting period and background checks on gun buyers. The following year it enacted a ban on certain “assault-style” semi-automatic weapons.

But those very victories played a role in the Democrats' loss of the House in the 1994 elections.

During its consideration in 2004 of a gun manufacturers’ liability bill that did not ultimately pass, the Senate did vote, 52 to 47, to extend for 10 years the 1994 ban on certain semi-automatic weapons.

Among those voting to extend the ban were current Democratic presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and John Edwards.

Among those voting “no” were GOP presidential contenders John McCain and Sam Brownback, as well as six Democrats, including now-Majority Leader Harry Reid.

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