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POLITICS
More Ammunition For Gun Advocates
With Democrats in charge and recent sensational incidents of gun violence, why isn't gun control advancing?
The National Rifle Association meeting last weekend in Phoenix was billed as a "celebration." The organization does not seem to have much to celebrate. A Democrat who has been a supporter of gun control is now president. And while he was winning the White House, his party was increasing its majorities in Congress.
Gun control advocates are the ones who should be celebrating, but they're not. "At this point, I guess the right term is that we are frustrated," said Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Last week, the Senate voted 67-29 to allow visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons.
"Sales have been fantastic. Off the chart.... Three or four times the usual volume, easily." -- Virginia gun shop manager
In February, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "There are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make. And among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons."
The response? According to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, "Sixty-five [congressional] Democrats wrote Attorney General Holder after he said he wanted to send that phony assault weapons ban back up to Capitol Hill and said, 'Don't send this phony stuff up here. You ought to be enforcing the laws you have.' "
Asked about the assault weapons ban at a congressional hearing last week, Holder responded, "We want to enforce the laws that we have on the books."
With Democrats in charge and so many sensational incidents of gun violence recently, why isn't gun control advancing? For one thing, the election created anxiety among gun owners. A lawyer interviewed at a Texas gun show said, "If [President Obama] and the people in control of Congress right now could have what they want, they would heavily restrict or eliminate guns from this country." A gun shop manager at a Virginia gun show said, "We have Obama, who is the most anti-gun president we have had.... We have a Democratic Congress that is one runoff election away from being filibuster-proof.... We have Eric Holder saying they want to bring back the assault weapons ban."
For more than six months, gun sales have been surging nationwide. Asked why an automatic rifle costs $2,200, a Texas gun dealer said, "Right now, they're just about impossible to find. Everybody kind of got scared. The market got depleted."
The Virginia gun shop manager said, "We have seen an increase in gun sales, actually people coming through the door, ticket sales at gun shows. Beginning in October, people saw the writing on the wall."
An ammunition dealer in Virginia said, "Sales have been fantastic. Off the chart. I couldn't be happier. Three or four times the usual volume, easily. It started in October when the presidential election looked like it was going to favor President Obama, and then on January 20, it skyrocketed."
Until this year, a majority of Americans favored stricter gun laws, according to polls by both Gallup and CNN. That backing had been trending down, however, as the nation's murder rate declined. Support for stricter gun laws fell from 78 percent in 1990, to 61 percent in 2000, to 51 percent in 2007, Gallup has found.
This year, we are seeing a sudden, sharp drop. In a CNN poll conducted by Opinion Research, support for stricter gun laws fell from 50 percent in 2007 to 39 percent last month. An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows a 10-point decline. In the CNN poll, support for tougher gun laws has held fairly steady among Democrats; the sharp decrease has been among independents and Republicans, where there are fewer Obama supporters.
In the 2006 and 2008 elections, Democrats made gains in a lot of conservative areas where gun owners are a potent electoral force. "They have proven over and over again at election time that they will go to the polls to defend [the Second Amendment] against politicians that try to take it away from them," LaPierre said.
What do Democratic legislators have to fear? Fear itself. As Henigan of the Brady Campaign put it, "It is all about generating fear among gun owners that somehow President Obama and the federal government are coming after their guns."