Conservatives want to keep guns on the front-burner — even after they’ve won

June 28, 2008

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling on gun control, Republicans are optimistic that they’ll be able to put guns back on the political world’s front-burner, and make the 2nd Amendment a key campaign issue this November.

“The gun issue is not going away,” said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican presidential candidate. “We are going to drive it. We are going to keep talking about this issue.”

Republicans will be aided by the National Rifle Association, which promises to do “everything” it can to hit Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (Ill.) on the issue…. “This case is galvanizing gun owners,” [NRA executive director Chris Cox] said. “The fight truly just starts now.”

Congressional Republicans also hope to benefit. The National Republican Congressional Committee sent out a release Thursday targeting Democrats in competitive House races who did not sign an amicus brief opposed to the gun ban. Fifty-five senators, including McCain, but not Obama, signed the brief, along with 250 House members.

I suppose the motivation is obvious enough. Republicans don’t have a lot of issues that a) they’re anxious to talk about; b) put Dems on the defensive; and c) generate excitement with the GOP base.

What I’m less sure about is what, exactly, Republicans and the NRA are going to say about the issue. They won — the Supreme Court ruled their way, and Democrats have effectively given up talking about gun control altogether. So what is there to campaign on?

If the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling had gone the other way, then sure, I could see this being a galvanizing issue for the right. The NRA could redouble its efforts to prevent other locales from following DC’s lead.

But that’s not what happened. The Supreme Court overturned DC’s ban (which is what Republicans wanted) and said firearm ownership is an individual right, not a collective right (which is also what Republicans wanted).

What’s the campaign message? Maybe Republicans could go after Dems who disagreed with the ruling, but what’s the point? If conservatives got the result they were looking for, what difference does it make if some hoped the ruling would go the other way? The law, at this point, is the law. Usually, one campaigns to ask for what they want. In this case, Republicans and the NRA already got what they want, and no one’s trying to take it away.

Given this, the Supreme Court didn’t give conservatives a campaign issue; the Supreme Court took away a campaign issue.

On the other hand, Kevin argues that those who were paranoid about gun ownership before, will remain paranoid now.

Unfortunately, my sense is that the gun confiscation argument never had all that much impact on centrist gun owners in the first place. It only appealed to an extremist fringe that’s fueled by an inchoate rage against pointy-headed DC bureaucrats — a rage that’s not going anywhere just because of one Supreme Court decision. After all, these are the guys who are so far off in lala land that they’re convinced it’s the United Nations that’s going to take their guns away. We all know the Supreme Court can’t stand up to the Secretary General (thanks to pointy-headed DC bureaucrats who are in on the game), so Heller is really pretty meaningless, isn’t it? The fight goes on.

Probably so. But I think we’re dealing with two groups of conservatives here — the paranoid fringe who fear a U.N.-driven gun-confiscation initiative and the more rank-and-file firearm enthusiasts who are find gun-control measures in general to be offensive.

For the prior, the Heller ruling won’t make any difference. Nothing could. But it may prove challenging to motivate the latter, since they just won a fight and no one wants a rematch.

God, guns and gays. It’s what they run on every year because frankly, it’s all they’ve got.

How’s this for a Republican TV ad:

“This summer, the Supreme Court affirmed your right to keep a gun in your home – by a vote of five to four! Who do you want to make the next Supreme Court appointment? Barak Obama?”

“John McCain! He’ll protect your constitutional right to bear arms!”

“I’m John McCain, and I approved this message because I’ve always supported the right of American citizens to bear arms, and I will continue to do so until I change my mind.”

Perhaps I got carried away there at the end.

  • “…“The gun issue is not going away,” said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican presidential candidate. “We are going to drive it. We are going to keep talking about this issue.”…”

    Even if it’s not an issue we’ll make it seem like one because we have nothing else to talk about except guns, gays, and abortion. We can wage war on the whole world, dismantle the constitution, drive energy costs through the roof but as long as you support gun ownership you should vote for us. I doubt the 3 issue campaign will work this time after the SC ruling. It’s the loud mouthed fringe of the GOP that is actually destroying them. How much stupidier can you look than to be screaming, “We’re gonna’ get the SC to overturn that gun ban in DC”

    “Hey, the SC already overturned that gun ban in DC.”

    “Yeah? Well we’re gonna’ make sure the SC overturns that gun ban in DC, so are you with me? We need your support on this.”

    What can you say? Stupid.

  • I wonder how pro-gun Democrats feel about the fact the GOP has made this their issue. Anyway, I think Okie nails the only way they could run this as an issue. Sort of a reverse of Roe. “We won and we need to stack the SC so we get more gun rights.”

    (And no, I don’t think you got carried away at the end.)

    The funny thing is, ReThugs have long depicted D.C. and other cities where minorities are the majority as places full of lawless thugs. If D.C. wants to require a first born child in exchange for a gun license the knuckledraggers will get a tad confused if the GOP tries to make that an issue. They’re also very susceptible to the T word, so if a legislator in any other state says the strict new gun rules are to keep guns out of terrorists hands the GOP will have to argue that terrorism isn’t that big a threat.

    Yeah, I know they’ll do it without blinking, but it’ll be fun watching them hop back and forth.

  • I just don’t think guns, gays and abortion are going to trump gas, mortgages, food prices, jobs, and wars this year.

  • It’s not that surprising to me that they would turn their Supreme Court victory into some kind of “call to action.” The Republicans acted like an oppressed minority even when they were in charge of every branch of government.

  • They must carry on. The law settles nothing as our prick president demonstrates daily. One would think they would chill given that the opposition has no intent of protecting citizens constitutional rights anyway. You know, little things like government spying on citizens or the confiscation of citizens guns after Katrina.

  • The SCOTUS decision has levelled the playing field in that women now have the right to bear arms and decide on an abortion, except of course the right to bear arms doesn’t apply if you are a gay woman in the military.

    I guess this all helps the GOP but I am still at a loss to understand how.

  • The proper course of attack is to go full bore on the dicta in Scalia’s opinion that suggests he would let anyone (e.g. felons, the mentally ill) take guns anywhere (e.g. schools) and hang it around McCain’s neck.

    The Democratic Party has quietly shifted from being a party that had a vocal anti-gun message to one that is far more pragmatic. If you want handgun laws in New York City but not Nevada, what is wrong with that.

    The GOP is handing the Democrats the opportunity to paint the GOP SCOTUS as bunch of whack jobs who are encouraging wild-west shootouts in metropolitan subways. Whether the Dems will run with this gift is another matter.

  • I think those saying it will continue to be used in SCOTUS arguments are right. There was one winger on the radio here who was outraged that it wasn’t a 9-0 decision.

  • Whoa, I think Steve (Benen, not commenter) missed the point on this one. In fact, the “I’m not sure why they think it’s an issue” is surprisingly unperceptive of him.

    To the right, or at least to strong 2nd amendment supporters, the Supreme Court decision is indeed just the beginning. The court ruled that gun ownership is an individual right, yes. The court also made it clear that it was not striking down restrictions on purchasing, licensing, or possession of guns. However, neither was it endorsing those things.

    To those so inclined, this decision sets a benchmark — the D.C. law is unconstitutional. The next step is to find out what level of gun control is permissible. Is there a point at which waiting periods or background checks impinge in the individual right to own a gun? Are restrictions on some types of weapons going to far? And so on.

    The right will likely argue that some forms of gun regulation amount to gun prohibition, at least for some constitutionally protected people. If the Democrats feel like they have “lost” this issue, wow are they going to be surprised when the right looks to build on this victory by seeking to weaken, or at least codify the limits of, other gun control statutes.

    McCain will also likely argue that the Supreme Court “just barely” saved us from the excesses of the Democrats, and that this 5-4 decision is a warning about the dangers of an Obama Presidency and potential Supreme Court appointments, just as the left is doing with regards to the child rape decision, which was also 5-4.

    I’m not arguing any position here, and I am unsure of the utility of this argument for McCain, so please don’t attack me for any opinions you might read into this note. I’m just trying to call out the point that Steve missed in the McCain campaign’s comments.

  • The Right To Bear Arms Right won’t give up until they can achieve neighborhood nuclear superiority

  • Now you get it! The second amendment is clear, gun ownership is required of all citizens! And all able bodied over twelve will soon be required by law to carry a handgun and swear to shoot to kill anyone they might see that could be construed as a terrorist, you know, like those who commit same sex marriage, smoke pot, or don’t want a gun.

    This is Scalia’s answer to those wimps giving prisoner’s rights at Guantanamo, we’ll have to arm all citizens so not to have Americans killed by raging mobs of released “enemy combatants”.

  • The Supreme Court overturned DC’s ban (which is what Republicans wanted) and said firearm ownership is an individual right, not a collective right…

    For the record, I want to say that I believe the Supreme Court got it wrong. The framers didn’t intend for gun ownership to be an individual right. Unfortunately, the so-called originalists on the court didn’t see it that way.

    In truth, whenever a person purchases a gun to protect his family, he actually endangers his family. Government statistics I’ve seen (CDC) indicate that having a gun in the home increases the chances of the gun owner, a loved one or somebody he knows getting killed by a gun by 300 percent. Of course, we all know that the rate of murders in America (plus accidental deaths by guns) dwarf those of other industrialized countries.

    Despite all the death and suffering arising out of our bizarre “Christian” culture, we Americans insist on having our guns, a ridiculously oversized military, enough nukes to blow the world up 100 times over, and the death penalty. Our collective obsession with violence and murder is seriously fucked-up.

  • Keith Olbermann dismissed Glenzilla by saying that Olbermann believed John Dean’s analysis of FIXa, but “Dean is the smartest man” he’s every known. One of the reasons he thinks Dean is so smart is a story about Dean recalling an interrupted story in court word for word.

    But, “Dick Neisser compared Dean’s testimony to actual transcripts of two critical conversations. In the September 15, 1972 conversation, Nixon said none of the things attributed to him by Dean” http://bis.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/rmpa00.htm

    Oops.

    Any body else wish there was a daily open thread?

  • Wasn’t the whole point of Obama doing well in the Red States that the Democrats are waking up to the fact that there are Democratic voters who support the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms? There has been a discussion going on elsewhere about the open carry laws and Jim Webb’s (you know, the guy touted as an Obama VP candidate) advocacy of them. This is no longer only about the NRA and the conservatives. If they are going to bring in new voters to the party, Dems will need to rethink this issue, and reframe it. Otherwise, Obama isn’t going to have much to say when he finally visits Appalachia, not to mention CO, NV, WY, MT, UT, Idaho and Eastern parts of OR and WA, and the Northeast where hunting is an enthusiastic pastime and the major means of keeping the deer off the highway.

    Other countries have as many guns as we do without the same levels of violence. Maybe it is time to do something about the source of the violence, which lies with people, not guns.

    Kevin Drum likes to dismiss gun advocates as crazies, perhaps because he lives in Irvine (a city that regularly makes the national 10 safest list) and because he feels secure in his life, but I think that the greater the threats to our civil liberties become via the surveillance state, and the more our protections seem to be whittled away via FISA compromises and right-to-torture memos, the greater the impetus for those who are a bit edgier, who study history enough to want to avoid being victims during civil chaos (whether right or left politically), to care about retaining their access to guns. These aren’t hillbillies and Texans but lawyers, doctors, and computer scientists with a Libertarian streak and a self-sufficiency or survivalist impulse. Mock them if you want, but they do vote.

    I find it odd that people here are worried about chasing the evangelicals and making sure that religion is seen as a liberal thing but are willing to cede the gun issue to the Republicans, even though a lot of gun owners are already Democrats.

  • I think it was Ulric Neisser who did that comparison. He found that Dean misremembered the details but that he had the gist right (gist means the main points, the overall meaning). That’s what most of these sorts of memory studies find.

    As I have said too many times to count here, human beings don’t remember details well. That’s why we have Google. You can’t judge someone’s intelligence on that basis. Otherwise we’d have Jeopardy winners running the country. Instead, the winners are usually people in obscure low level jobs or recent law school grads waiting to take the bar exam (e.g., people with too much time on their hands and a willingness to cram trivia).

  • Every child as he/she emerges from the womb should be issued a handgun and a lifetime supply of ammunition, courtesty of the NRA. That way we’ll all be safe.

  • (#8): The proper course of attack is to go full bore on the dicta in Scalia’s opinion that suggests he would let anyone (e.g. felons, the mentally ill) take guns anywhere (e.g. schools) and hang it around McCain’s neck.

    I think you need to to re-read the decision, since Scalia specifically says that such regulation as keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people and preventing their presence in schools is entirely acceptable to him.

    In fact, Scalia has no problem with regulation of gun ownership – he was against a total ban. So long as the regulations are seen as reasonable they will likely pass muster.

    The big problem is fighting the gunnermorons over the fact they don’t have a right to a full-auto AK-47 for “hunting.”

  • I’m a gun-owning liberal. I was very disappointed in the SC’s decision because although it did not do away with existing laws restricting gun types, controls on gun purchases or any of the other laws regarding the ownership of firearms, it did open every last one of them to court challenge. By deciding that a law regulating a specific type of firearm is a violation of the Second Amendment, the court has opened to challenge the regulation of other specific types of firearms, e.g.; machine guns, .50 caliber sniper rifles, machine pistols, full-auto assault rifles, etc. Is the law prohibiting me from owning, say, an AK-47 and a brace of thirty round clips a violation of my Second Amendment rights? I don’t think so but I know people who do think so. This crap is going to drag through the courts for years.

  • So, what they are saying is, basically,

    “You can have my gun issue when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

    Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

    Personally, now that Nino Scalia set me straight on that whole ‘well regulated militia’ business, I’ve seen the light. Now I’m interested in building up the family nuclear stockpile, which I will want to defend my family, while I dial NATO with the other hand. Or something.

  • Obama’s making a pragmatic shift – call it a flip-flop if you will – to move to the centre on this issue. Gun control? I don’t believe it’s particularly close to Obama’s heart and it’s certainly way down a list of what’s important right now.

    The position he’s taking on the SCOTUS judgement isn’t so much a case of ‘appealing’ to gun owners, as neutralizing the issue. The root problem for McCain is that he’s struggling to motivate and inspire. He’s groping around for a cause celebre that will energize a large constituency and he’s hoping that gun control is it. In this political chess game, Obama simply moves to a more populist position and says he agrees with the “the law-abiding use of firearms”. McCain now finds that the stick he wanted to beat Obama with isn’t there.

    McCain will shortly be back to trying to bring terrorism as the most pressing item on the agenda. It’s important alright, but it’s doubtful whether it trumps an economy that’s in the toilet.

  • I’m also of the opinion that neocons will look at the 5-4 ruling, not as a win, but as an ALMOST-defeat. Ironic since they agreed that a less than 1 percent Bush victory in 04 was a “mandate” for sweeping neocon changes. A cynic might think that neocons will say or do anything to justify their pathetic worldview. I’ll leave it for a cynic to say.

    Regardless, the verdict will be used as a warning by neocons that we will always need more neocon judges, so that verdict can never be repealed, the same way libs patiently try to covince thundertards like Mary – Blindly devoted Hillary worshippers who will vote for McCain even when they claim they won’t – that McCain’s already pledged to nominate more Scalias & Alitos to the Supreme Court which will jeopardize, probably repeal, Roe v. Wade, so if you’re pro-choice, voting for MCCain is dumber than banging Paris Hilton without a rubber.

  • For the NRA it is an economic issue. Handgun ownership is now a civil right.. For a large number of gun owners the issue is no longer crucial since it in now a matter of defining the limits of the right. IF this means paying a fee or taking a test (unlikely if this right is treated the way the right to vote was) then that is OK as they have already accepted similar restrictions with concealed carry laws. Rich white guys can afford it. But they will also not be as driven to join groups such as the Second
    Amendment Association since the problem has been resloved.

    The NRA knows this so they need to strike while the iron is hot and get more money right now while the issue is still undefined. Think March of Dimes.

    On the other hand, if we were talking about the right to vote or abortion, no one would be surprised that the groups that were the strongest advocates still pushed the message three days after the Supreme Court decision and before any practical application of the ruling existed. It took years for those rulings to be fully realized (if they have ever been.)

  • Anybody else wish there was a daily open thread? — Dale, @15

    Yeah, me. There was a fascinating article in today’s NYT, which, perhaps could have gone to the This Week In God thread but which would have fit in an open thread :
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29marriage.html
    about marriage of underage girls in Yemen. One teeny bit I noted in it was that, when the old, godless commies ruled, they set the age of assent at 16 (for girls; 18 for males) but, when the ultra-religious took over, 8yrs old became, apparently, plenty old enough. There’s nothing like that good, religious tradition…

    slappy, @24,

    I don’t, actually, believe that the Supremes — even if totally “conservative — would ever *ban* abortions, depriving the right wing of a yapping point. Just make it so difficult that only the rich — who can afford to travel to Europe — would have them.

  • Slappy — how many times do I have to tell you that I have never stated that I will vote for McCain. If you can’t quote me properly, leave my name out of your comments.

  • “God, guns and gays.”Okie…..”

    You forgot one of the “G’s” : Gas

    Now the GOP can run on a platform of “drilling” you with bullets, oil wells, sexual encounters, and their version of what God may have said on these important social issues. That’s a lot of drilling”positions” but hey, if nothing else it does give one a “lot of gas”…(sorry)

  • yeah, Mary but you’ve also implied that you’re smart, based on your education & supposed career, and yet you say so much stupid crap. If you’re gonna lie about that..

    Besides, we both know you’re probably going to vote for McCain. Maybe Barr or Nader. Certainly not Obama. Don’t be silly by pretending otherwise.

    Ah, go ahead, keep beng silly. Why change now?

  • I find it curious that the same SC justices that need to protect gun ownership stopped the vote counting in Florida in the 2000 elections and in so doing, picked our President.

    The argument that citizen gun ownership (and I also own guns) will prevent government tyranny is a very hollow shell.

  • Glen,
    Well said. Whipping out your gun when the government is illegally wiretapping your phone doesn’t do much.

    On the other note, what Scalia mentioned in his majority opinion on the gun deal was actually very centrist gun talk. He was practically giving support for gun registration, as well as other such gun regulation. These are still big no-no’s with much of the gun folk I know and/or have read.

    If they do make it an campaign issue, it shouldn’t be very hard to show that even McCain support most of the gun regulation that 2nd amendment groups oppose. NRA might be different, mainly because they are such GOP lovers.

  • I am so glad that someone had the guts to stand up and said something about this, the republicans had disregard Sen. Kerry war records so I don’t understand why McCain goes about boosting his serve in the marines, my family and other family members serve and I am tired of hearing about him being shot down, this doesn’t give him the right to run for President.

  • Democrats have effectively given up talking about gun control altogether.

    The GOP has yet to appreciate how much more dangerous that has made us.
    The 50 state strategy combined with gun rights means commanding majorities going forward. The midwest, southwest and northern plains are now in play and will only get tougher.

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