Libs With Guns

I followed a cool link from GTL's site the other day, Liberals with Guns. And what's completely unfair of me - though I'm not sure I can help it - is that the song, "Cows with Guns" runs through my head every time I read the site. For those of you unfamiliar with the song, it's here. I laugh every time.

But the Libs with Guns make a good point about the Dem platform, even as they miss what I think is the real problem:

So why is the national party trying so hard to recast the protections of the Second Amendment as applying only to hunting firearms, if 80% of gun owners don't hunt and hunting has absolutely nothing to do with 2nd-Amendment jurisprudence? Or to turn the question around--why did party leaders think that demonstrating support for hunters would allow the party to go after non-hunting guns with impunity? Four out of five gunnies don't hunt; is it any wonder that a pro-hunting message didn't win the bloc?...

Leave it to the states. Advocating "moderate" gun control may play fairly well in places like Southern California, Massachusetts, New York City, Chicago, and D.C . But what the prohibitionists consider "moderate" can be politically disastrous in pro-gun states like Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Nevada, and West Virginia.

If it is so important for gun-404 residents of NYC or Boston or Chicago or San Francisco (where legal ownership of ALL types of guns is rather difficult) to have a ban on low-powered-but-scary-looking guns to make them feel better, let them work for a LOCAL ban, or at worst a state ban (which is already law in Massachusetts, California, and a few other gun-phobic states) instead of trying to shove a national ban down the throats of people in other states who not only don't want one, but who will politically mobilize and fight tooth and nail to defeat any national candidate that calls for one. That is one key lesson the Democratic Party needs to learn from the 2004 election.

Egads! The liberals learn federalism! ;) Frankly, I think he's exactly correct as far as he goes, but misses one important point about why Dems who pretend to be hunters not only don't pick up the hunter vote, but end up as campaign fodder for Republicans: no one believes these Dems are hunters. In fact, they're unconsciously surprised that these libs can figure out which end of the gun fires. I'm not saying that expectation is correct, but that libs have been gun-phobic for so long that a liberal holding a gun looks out of place, and that perceived hypocrisy is more damaging than just not talking about the issue at all. No one for whom gun ownership is an issue beleives that liberal politicians, who have spent much of their time demonizing gun owners, really believe that the Second Amendment protects their right to a gun.

Liberals have to change not the perception, but the reality, and let the perception change itself. If the liberals can give up their phobias, they might actually find it easier to trap Bush, who was gutless enough that, even though he said he supported the assault weapons ban, would not pressure Congress to renew it.

In other words, Bush doesn't support the freedom of gun ownership. But he does not have the courage of his convictions. That already gives him two strikes in the minds of those for whom gun ownership is important.

If the Libs would embrace the Second Amendment and clear up their confusion about automatic vs. semi-automatic weapons, they could stop saying stupid stuff like this:

"Well, these weapons only have one purpose, to kill a lot of people quickly. No legitimate hunter uses them. You can't shoot animals with them. No legitimate person in self-defense uses them because they spray so many bullets so quickly, so wildly, and so the bottom line is there's only--the only people who use them are mass murderers, people who want to--drug dealers--frighten other people, et cetera. -- Charles Schumer

Anyone who knows anything about semi-automatic rifles knows they don't "spray" bullets, much less "wildly." But if the liberals in Washington would educate themselves and take a little lesson in federalism from the Liberals with Guns, they could neutralize their bogeyman, the NRA, rather than being made into hamburger every other November.

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