Candidates
Playing It Safe on Gun Issues
Candidates Playing It Safe on Gun Issues
WASHINGTON -- Doug Hattaway tells a cautionary tale for the candidates of 2004 from the annals of the last campaign.
Al Gore's presidential
campaign spokesman was flying over the candidate's home state of Tennessee in
2000 when he overheard this complaint from a couple of men talking in business
class: "The problem with Al Gore is he'll take our guns away."
"I knew we were in
trouble," said Hattaway. When he heard that exchange, he realized the rap
against Democrats as antigun was taking hold, and not only among the
stereotypical working-class Southerners drawn to the National Rifle Association.
This time around,
Democrats have lunged toward the middle on gun control, avoiding edgy proposals
like gun registration and gun-owner licensing and sticking with stands that
almost match, at least rhetorically, those of President Bush.
"The agenda has
not changed so much, as their embracing of a principled agenda that can be
enacted rather than throwing away elections on policies that are going
nowhere," said Hattaway, now a consultant who helps a moderate gun-control
group.
Guns have been largely
silent in this presidential campaign. But Congress is forcing the issue into the
open with a vote scheduled Tuesday on renewing the ban on assault-type weapons
and extending background checks to gun shows.
Candidates John Kerry
and John Edwards, the only Democrats to miss a Senate vote on another gun issue
last week, have been summoned back from campaigning to bolster the party's ranks
for what is expected to be a close vote.
The vote comes up on
the same day as the 10-state Super Tuesday contests for the Democratic
nomination.
The issue, while
contentious, does not carry the same political stakes of Gore's gun positions in
2000. Edwards, a Southerner who grew up around firearms, speaks of his support
for "modest" changes in gun control; Kerry often tells a crowd how
much he likes to hunt. Wearing a flannel shirt and rubber boots, he shot some
pheasants on a recent hunting trip.
"I believe I can
speak to that culture," he said.
Not only are there few
differences between the Democratic candidates on gun control, there is barely
any difference between them and Bush, at least on the surface.
Asked how they differ
on guns, Hattaway said: "Kerry is probably a better shot."
The debate, if it can
be called that, is over enforcing existing law, because enforcement has
continued to lag under Bush as it did under former President Clinton.
Democrats are
soft-pedaling the issue this time because "it probably doesn't win them
votes in states where they are trying to improve," said Earl Black, a
political scientist at Rice University in Houston.
Anyway, Black said,
most people who are really interested in gun issues would back Bush. "I
don't think Edwards or Kerry will have the kind of records that would tempt many
of the gun people away from the Republicans," he said.
In the 2000 election,
roughly half of voters were from gun-owner households, and they voted for Bush
by 61 percent to 36 percent, according to exit polls. The voters from non-gun
owner households, voted for Gore by 58-39.
Some strategists
believe gun owners are more motivated to vote on gun issues than others are, and
so pushing an agenda may be more of a risk for Democrats. A Pew poll in February
found that Republicans were less likely to vote for someone who differed with
their position on guns than Democrats were.
Indeed, the poll
suggests other social issues are more important to voters - and currently more
divisive - than gun control. For example, 40 percent of respondents said they
would not vote for anyone who disagrees with them on gay marriage, and 34
percent felt the same about abortion. Only 32 percent ruled out voting for a
candidate who differs with them on guns.
Hattaway, the former
Gore spokesman, doesn't anticipate the gun issue to flare up in the election
campaign.
"The issues that
are on the table are popular with gun owners and non-gun owners alike," he
said. "There's no point losing elections over proposals like registering
handguns that are never going to see the light of day in Congress."