So much for the NRA having an office at the Bush White House. Now we can add the “gun vote” to the groups who’ve grown disillusioned with Bush.
The LA Times noted today that some gun owners, who backed Bush enthusiastically in 2000, are starting to weigh their options. Though the article is frustratingly vague on specific numbers, “many” appear poised to abandon Bush on Election Day.
Surprisingly, the issues that have most alienated many gun groups from the Bush administration have little to do with firearms, but rather with the Patriot Act and other homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11. Opposition to such laws has aligned gun-rights activists with unlikely partners, such as liberal Democrats and the ACLU.
The dilemma Bush faces is that although most gun-rights groups consider him far more friendly to their concerns than Kerry, he may have lost enough of their political support to keep them from becoming an energized and therefore influential voting bloc in a close election.
Bush has not engendered “enthusiasm” among gun-rights voters, said Larry Pratt, the longtime head of the Gun Owners of America, a political and lobbying organization. “Sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s bad.”
The Bush administration has come down on the side of gun-rights groups on several issues, perhaps most notably in opposing efforts to hold firearm manufacturers liable for damages caused by their products. But it also has repeatedly disappointed gun activists on other issues, from refusing to allow airline pilots to arm themselves to quietly supporting the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
It’s an interesting political dynamic. Voters who consider gun rights near the top of their priority list tend to be libertarian in their approach to the size of government. Bush, meanwhile, has expanded the size of the federal government, in some ways more than Clinton ever did, and as a result, he alienated a key constituency.
Still angry about the FBI’s 1993 botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, gun-rights groups have repeatedly raised the alarm in recent years over privacy and search-and-seizure issues.
They deeply oppose new airline screening procedures, which they view as violations of search-and-seizure laws, the detaining of terrorism suspects without charging them with crimes, and especially the Patriot Act, which allows law enforcement to tap phones without a search warrant in some cases.
Fine, but how many votes are we really talking about here? The LA Times didn’t cite (and I can’t find) any polling data from pro-gun activists about their political intentions for Election Day. If there is widespread disenchantment, however, several states could be in play.
West Virginia, for example, was a state that Dems had carried in five of the previous six elections before the 2000 race (even Dukakis won the state). Bush and the NRA, however, convinced West Virginians that Gore was a fringe, anti-gun fanatic, and Bush ended up winning the state by almost 7%. If gun activists are genuinely frustrated with the Bush administration, it’s not hard to imagine West Virginia being a potential pick-up for Kerry this year. The same can be said for states such as Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas, all of which were close Red states in 2000.
It may help that Dems have all-but abandoned gun control as a serious policy issue on their domestic agenda. Howard Dean boasted of his “A” rating from the NRA during throughout 2003 and the left nevertheless considered him a hero, a scenario that would have been virtually unimaginable 10 years ago. John Kerry, for his part, seems to remind voters frequently that he’s a gun owner and sportsman.
I’m not saying a few pictures of Kerry shooting a duck will guarantee victory in Tennessee this year, but I am saying that Dems’ relative silence on the issue can help peel away some votes in key states.
Ultimately, Dems don’t really need to generate mass conversions of gun owners from the GOP; they just need less active support from gun groups working on the GOP’s behalf.
Gun groups are known for their political activism mainly in local and congressional races, but their support for or opposition to candidates can have broad reach. During the 2000 campaign, the NRA spent nearly $18 million to back mostly Republican candidates, making it one of the party’s five largest independent donors. It spent more than $1 million on ads to support Bush and to attack Gore….
This year state and regional gun groups are openly attacking not only Bush, but other Republicans they view as turncoats.
If the NRA kept some of that money instead of spending it on Bush and other Republicans, it could make a big difference in November.