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Democrats Recast Gun Control Image

Party Eyes Inroads in the West

Boston Globe
Saturday, December 17, 2005

By Susan Milligan
Globe Staff

WASHINGTON – The Democratic Party, long identified with gun control, is rethinking its approach to the gun debate, seeking to improve the chances of its candidates in Western states where hunters have been wary of casting votes for a party with a national reputation of being against guns.

The Democrats’ effort to soften their rhetoric on gun control is similar to the party’s recent efforts to recast its message on abortion, maintaining their support of abortion rights but welcoming more Democrats who favor restrictions on the procedure.

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who had been a critic of some forms of gun control during his tenure as governor of Vermont, has urged candidates to view gun control laws as state issues, allowing those in rural states to reflect the values of hunters and others hostile to gun control, while supporting restrictions in urban areas with serious crime problems.

“On gun rights, we’ve allowed the Republicans to paint us in a way that just doesn’t represent our values,” said Damien LaVera, a Dean spokesman, noting that Republicans have repeatedly portrayed Democrats as hostile to the Western way of life.

“It’s all about not letting the Republicans define our values,” LaVera said.

The National Rifle Association, the powerful arm of the gun lobby, has noticed the shift in positions of Democratic candidates. The percentage of money donated by the NRA to Democratic House and Senate candidates has more than doubled, from 6 percent in the 2002 election cycle to 14 percent so far in the 2006 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the NRA, said the group has “seen a marked change” in Democratic behavior.

“Certainly, we support more Republicans than Democrats, but we’ve seen in the last few years an increasing number of Democrats actively seeking the NRA endorsement and actually winning it,” Arulanandam said.

Even before Democrats began recasting their positions, gun control was in trouble on Capitol Hill. The assault-weapons ban passed during the Clinton administration, barring 19 styles of weapons, expired in September 2004 and Congress did not renew it.

Meanwhile, gun control advocates in Congress have been trying unsuccessfully to close the so-called “gun show loophole,” which allows unlicensed sellers to peddle their weapons at gun shows without having to perform background checks on buyers.

Democratic Party officials say they expect their candidates to have a wide range of opinions on gun control, and insist that the national party’s message of “responsible gun ownership” is not hostile to law-abiding gun owners. But some Democrats from rural states say the party still needs to do more to be inclusive and sympathetic to gun owners.

Candidates opposing gun control “are depicted by some in our party as a bunch of yahoos, and we’re not,” said Paul Hackett, a Democratic Senate candidate from Ohio and a member of the National Rifle Association. “We are just good Democrats who are pro-gun.

“As a party, our lack of understanding of gun sports is hurting us,” said Hackett, a former Marine who owns about 20 guns.

Democrats’ ability to attract rural voters in the West is a key to their hopes in 2006. In Montana, where Democrats hope to pick up a US Senate seat next year, candidates must be pro-gun to have a chance at winning, said the state’s Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, an avid hunter who has “more guns than I need but not as many as I want.”

“I guess I kind of believe in gun control: You control your gun, and I’ll control mine,” Schweitzer said.

Democrats have made some headway in elections in the Mountain West, Schweitzer noted, winning majorities in both houses of the Colorado Legislature and picking up the Montana governorship last year for the first time since 1988. But national Democrats need to understand that their Western members have a different view of guns than those who live in areas where “teenagers are wearing their caps backward, wearing baggy pants, and are shooting at each other,” said Schweitzer.

In states like Montana, with its vast expanses, where training in the use of guns is a rite of passage for children in some families, Republicans have often cited Democratic-led gun-control laws as a wedge issue between the parties.

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, said the two parties still have a values gap on gun rights. And he said that the GOP isn’t worried about losing to pro-gun rights Democrats in rural areas. “We have had pro-gun Democrats before, and we have defeated them,” Forti said.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said his party does not impose any kind of gun policy. The party’s 2004 platform took a middle ground on gun control, pledging both to honor the Second Amendment right to bear arms and to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Like Dean, Emanuel urges candidates to represent the wishes of their constituents.

“They’ve got to reflect their districts,” Emanuel said.

But some other party leaders acknowledge that as a group, Democrats still have an anti-gun image that could hinder even those candidates who oppose gun control. Some of the party’s most prominent members—including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California—support gun control, a more common view among lawmakers from urban areas.

Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said: “I think there are people here in New Hampshire who do think of Democrats as a party that wants to take guns away from responsible gun owners. It’s important for candidates up here to stress, no, that’s not what we want to do.”

Some gun control supporters question Dean’s stance that gun control should be a regional matter. Such an approach is not workable because people can buy guns legally in one state and use them to commit crimes in others, said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

But Hamm also acknowledged that gun control supporters have done a poor job framing their arguments in ways that do not make lawful hunters fear their lifestyle is under attack, Hamm said.

“Folks say, ‘You’re using that [assault weapons ban] as a secret message to try to get to our hunting rifles,’” he said. “It’s a shame they believe that, but we haven’t done a good job countering that.”

Democratic candidates in Western and Southwestern states say the gun control issue has become important because many rural voters, including many hunters, have grown more sympathetic to Democrats’ support for environmental initiatives.

Hunters are as concerned about having a place to hunt as much as they are worried about keeping their guns, said Tony Massaro, senior vice president of the League of Conservation Voters.

“Politicians in the West need to be able to run in rural areas, in addition to urban and suburban regions,” he said. “In order to do this, they need to protect habitat and not be seen as wanting to take away the ability to hunt.”

From the article:



A problem gun control groups have is that only a minority of gun owners are active hunters. It's all well and good to say that they don't want lawful hunters to fear their lifestyle is under attack but it means that it's open season on the majority of gun owners.

Lets see if they are all talk similar to one former presidential canidate, cough cough johnkerry cough cough or they have finally realized that "gun control will help cost them elections"

I don't know whether your statement is correct or not, but it doesn't matter. That minority states their mind politically- and they vote.

I'm a Democrat and I support the Second Amendment. Sometimes I think the Second Amendment is the only thing we've got left to even offer up a few ounces of resistance to the powers that be. We lose a lot of people on the gun issue.

And I've never once hunted.

From posting on numerous forums, i have came to the conclusion that there are quite a few pro-gun Democrats out there (Myself included). I agree 100% that this issue is costing us a ton of votes. If we were to mellow out i know for a fact it would help us out in future elections. But, if we keep nominating people who come out and say that they are for gun control and would sign the AWB, then we're screwed.

What an idiotic statement. Of COURSE the gun prohibitionist lobby isn't after our hunting rifles. Problem is, they ARE fighting to ban half the guns in our family's gun safe. Mr. Hamm supports banning my wife's 15-round defensive handgun, and outlawing a couple of my rifles because he doesn't like the way their stocks are shaped.


The problem for the Democratic party is that nonhunting gun owners, who are the vast majority, also state their mind politically, and they vote.

Desron is quite correct; there are only around 16 million active hunters in the United States, compared to ~80 million gun owners. That's only 1 in 5. The #1 reason for gun ownership in the United States is defensive purposes, followed by recreational target shooting as #2 and hunting coming in a distant third. And of the 1 in 5 gun owners who hunts, many/most also own NONHUNTING guns that the prohibitionists advocate banning.

As a gun owner, I personally don't care if some political elite will "allow" me to own a hunting rifle (which I don't own), but I care very much if said elite wants to confiscate half the guns in our family's gun safe.