But the lawsuit immunity bill returned, and, after Republicans picked up Senate seats in the 2004 elections, it was eventually passed by Congress. The assault weapons ban, on the other hand, was not, nor were any of the other gun-control amendments that had once been added to the immunity bill. In September of 2004, the original assault weapons ban passed in 1994 expired and assault weapons became legal again. Since then, Democratic attempts to bring the ban back have faltered.
The expiration of the ban may have had some consequences in Blacksburg. ABC News has speculated that the shooter probably used a high-capacity ammunition clip of a type that was prohibited under the ban but became widely available when the ban expired. The other major piece of anti-gun legislation passed in the Clinton era, the Brady Bill, has been weakened as well, because of rules put in place by former Attorney General John Ashcroft when he took office in 2001.
The desire to court voters in swing states with a large percentage of gun owners is the primary reason that Democrats have recently tended to view the issue of gun control as poisonous. There were other reasons as well, however. First, there were fears that support for gun control could split a key Democratic constituency: union members. A survey done by Americans for Gun Safety has shown that 54 percent of union households own a gun. Moreover, gun control is an issue with what Spitzer describes as "hassle" and "intensity" factors that don't favor advocates. Supporters of gun rights are passionate in a way that supporters of gun control are not -- gun-rights backers are single-issue voters and activists, while on the other side, Spitzer says, "the typical gun control supporter is somebody for whom the issue is not a No. 1 concern, it's No. 6 or No. 8."
Doug Hattaway, who was national spokesman for Gore's 2000 campaign and is now the president of Hattaway Communications, concurs. Hattaway notes that organizations like the Brady Campaign cite the high public support for gun control measures, but says that support doesn't translate into electoral victories for Democrats.
"There's a difference between agreeing on an issue and having it motivate your vote," Hattaway says. "Yes, people agree, but there's not a potent pro-gun control constituency in national elections."
There is, on the other hand, some potential downside that can come with being a supporter of gun control, the "hassle factor" to which Spitzer refers.
"The NRA and its allies are pretty good at hassling gun-control people," Spitzer says. "For somebody like [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.], that won't matter much, but there are a lot of Democrats for whom it will matter."
Much of the Democrats' shift on the issue can be traced back to the elections of 2000. Matt Bennett, who is vice president for public affairs at the centrist think tank Third Way, which grew out of Americans for Gun Safety -- AGS is now a project of Third Way -- says that after Gore's defeat, "A lot of people -- [former DNC Chairman Terry] McAuliffe, Daschle, [former House Minority Leader Dick] Gephardt -- were going around saying that guns had been the key ... There was a lot of talk about how Democrats should avoid the issue entirely."
As Franklin Foer reported in the New Republic, "The hand-wringing began just as the Supreme Court awarded Florida's electoral votes to George W. Bush." Early in December, by Foer's telling, then-House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., summoned House Democrats to his Capitol office, 20 at a time, and gave a sales presentation. Pollster Mark Gersh pointed to charts and told the Democrats they'd lost because culture war issues, especially gun control, had distracted voters. Many apparently went away convinced.
By the middle of 2001, ditching gun control had become conventional wisdom among centrist Democrats. Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said Al Gore had talked about it too much. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Gore's running mate, thought gun control had cost the Democratic ticket "a number of voters who on almost every other issue realized they'd be better off with Al Gore." Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee, in particular wanted his party to drop the issue. In a June 2001 article discussing McAuliffe's strategy, Roger Simon cited a strong correlation between gun ownership and voting for Bush, as demonstrated by exit poll stats. "Guns made a big difference in 2000," argued Simon, "especially in some key states that Al Gore lost, like Tennessee and Arkansas." What Simon did not establish was how many of these gun owners considered gun control a paramount issue, or whether any of them would've chosen Gore over Bush if the vice president had moved further or earlier to the right.
Once this new consensus had emerged, says Matt Bennett, "That's when Americans for Gun Safety came on the scene." AGS advocated a new approach to Democrats' language on gun issues, and the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist faction within the party, allied itself with the group. In July 2001, AGS president Jonathan Cowan and policy director Jim Kessler took to the pages of Blueprint, the DLC's house magazine, to explain their thinking in an article titled "Changing the Gun Debate."
"The solution isn't to clam up on guns," Cowan and Kessler wrote, "but rather to change the terms of the gun debate ... It's time for Democrats -- and progressive Republicans -- to embrace a 'third way' gun policy that treats gun ownership as neither an absolute right nor an absolute wrong and that calls for a balance between gun rights and gun responsibilities. To win elections, Democrats need to reason with gun owners rather than insult them."
There is, perhaps, no better example of the way this message has been embraced by the Democratic Party than the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. As Bennett notes, the Kerry campaign wanted voters to see photos of the senator, an accomplished marksman, in action with a hunting rifle. And when Kerry came back to the Senate in March of 2004 to vote on the assault weapons ban, he was on message, using the standard AGS formulation that combines language about rights with language about responsibilities.
Indeed, says Kessler, aides to all the major candidates of the 2004 Democratic presidential primary series met with AGS; he names Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, Lieberman and former Sen. John Edwards as candidates whose staffs came to AGS "asking what to do and how to frame things."
Hattaway, who was also a consultant for AGS, credits the organization with the change in the Democratic Party's message on the issue.
"Tremendous progress has been made in taking the issue off the table and reducing the potency of the NRA," Hattaway says. "I'd say Americans for Gun Safety were the force in improving the Democrats' position."
On the other side, Helmke, of the Brady Campaign, is frustrated with the Democrats' shift, though he notes that they aren't the only ones to play with the language of the debate -- the Brady Campaign used to be called Handgun Control Inc. Still, he thinks the contention that gun control is a losing issue is untrue.
"That's the myth that a lot of the politicians and the consultants bought into, that if you mentioned the words 'gun control' ... you were going to catch it from the other side," Helmke says. "I think what's happening is that most of the consultant types are saying stay away from this issue, it's a loser ... [But] I have tried to convince Democrats that they can address gun control if they do it the right way."
About the writer
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.
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