Last week, I noted that the Seattle Post Intelligencer (which is still a stupid name for a newspaper) was lamenting the fact that politicians aren’t talking about gun control. Now, the NYT is getting in on the why, oh, why aren’t politicians doing more to make life harder on gun owners truck:

The Democrats Get Gun Shy

After the shootings at Northern Illinois University earlier this month, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made statements about guns. Still, gun control has hardly been a big subject in this year’s presidential primary. It isn’t just the presidential candidates who have tried to finesse the subject. Congressional Democrats have also been wary.

It’s real simple. The former want to get elected and the latter want to keep their jobs.

For example, a major and seemingly non-controversial bill to change the way the federal government manages public housing programs made it to the House floor for final debate this week. But the measure was suddenly pulled back. The reason: Republicans had offered an amendment focusing on the fact that many public housing authorities across the nation have long chosen to ban firearms. The amendment sponsor decried this as a form of discrimination “against the poorest in our nation.”

Are you advocating we disarm poor people?

The Democratic leadership — well aware that the gun issue is a potent one in a lot of swing congression (sic) districts — was in no mood to fight on this particular political terrain.

Well, they are the party of . . . something.

The retreat was not an isolated incident. Guns are being systematically raised in bill after bill lately by Republicans, with Democrats showing no sign of the resolve they brandished over a decade ago to enact the now defunct ban on high-powered assault weapons.

That’s because the good guys (ahem, we crazy gun nuts) are winning. People no longer buy what the gun control lobby is selling.

Another long-sought, non-controversial measure ­to overhaul the nation’s neglected health care pledges to American Indians also had to pay obeisance to the gun issue. The only way the Senate bill could make it to passage this week was with the inclusion of an amendment (easily adopted 78-to-11) that bans health care funds from being used to decrease gun ownership among the tribes.

Are you advocating that, in addition to the poor, we disarm minorities?

The Democrats’ shift dates to Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, when he was an outspoken supporter of renewing the assault weapons ban. After his loss, Terry McAuliffe, the national Democratic chairman who is now chairman of Senator Clinton’s presidential run, bitterly warned future party candidates that gun control was a third-rail issue they should avoid.

“I believe we ought to move it out, let the individual communities decide their gun laws and how guns ought to be treated,” Mr. McAuliffe advised, virtually parroting the gun lobby. “It has had a devastating impact on elections because the NRA has targeted and spent millions of dollars distorting individual members’ views and Al Gore’s views.”

If Al Gore had stuck to his NRA Life Member days, he’d be president.

The discouraging political fact this year is how faithfully Democrats are adhering to the McAuliffe doctrine in the Capitol and beyond ­– even as the national calm is interrupted repeatedly by gun rampages at universities and shopping malls.

Actually, I find it quite encouraging. They can be taught!

And another newspaper (the Post-Bulletin) also parrots that candidates are avoiding promoting gun control. Literally, parrots. It’s a reprint from the Post Intelligencer.

In an election year, they are shocked that politicians are pandering to a large group of voters. It’s actually pretty simple: Gunnies vote. Meanwhile, I see that no one is sucking up to anti-gunners nor is anyone seeking an endorsement from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership.

Posted in uncategorized on March 3rd, 2008 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |