ELECTIONATE DECEMBER 14, 2012
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Over the last four presidential elections, gun control has been as settled as any political question, with Democrats all but conceding the issue to Republicans in national elections. A spate of mass shootings during the first four years of the Obama presidency didn't change this, but there is some reason to think that the terrible elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut could be different.
Gun control optimists shouldn’t count on Newtown to produce a sea change in public opinion. Pew Research, Washington Post, and CNN surveys each found that support for gun control held relatively stable and beneath 50 percent in the immediate aftermath of the Gabrielle Giffords and Aurora, Colorado shootings. Although mass shootings, like Columbine, have led to an increase in public support for gun control in the past, even this proved temporary, with public opinion returning to pre-Columbine levels within a year, as this chart from Mark Blumenthal shows:
But even though the public might not overwhelmingly favor gun control, there’s reason to believe that Democrats can again feel comfortable fighting for gun control after a decade of keeping it on the back-burner. After all, they're less reliant on rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party.
Democrats backed away from gun control after concluding that the issue cost Al Gore the presidency, since he lost conservative, pro-gun states carried twice by Bill Clinton, like Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, or Missouri. But although national Democrats stayed silent on the issue for the next four presidential elections, neither John Kerry nor Barack Obama reclaimed these conservative, pro-gun Clinton-Bush voters. In fact, Obama and Kerry both performed worse than Gore among conservative rural voters. The fact is that these pro-gun voters are lost to Republicans, and probably for good.
But though Democrats may have thought they needed these voters to prevail in 2000 or 2004, Democrats have found a way to win without gun lovers in West Virginia: doing even better in suburbs and cities, where support for gun control is presumably at its highest. That’s even true in Ohio, where Obama won Ohio twice by improving upon past Democrats' performances in urban and suburban areas, rather than racking up conservative voters in southeastern Ohio, like Clinton or Carter. The success of Democrats in well-educated suburbs has placed Republicans in a situation not too dissimilar from the one facing Democrats at the beginning of the last decade. To win nationally, Republicans will need to reclaim the socially moderate suburbs around Denver, Washington, and Philadelphia where gun control is at least a neutral issue, if not a real asset to Democrats.
At the very least, the fact that Democrats can win nationally without southeastern Ohio or West Virginia means that they can address gun control without fear of jeopardizing the presidency. After all, national polls show the public roughly divided on the issue, even though Democrats haven't even argued for gun control in twelve years. But if Democrats are savvy enough to stress popular measures like an assault weapons ban, which commands the support of approximately 60 percent of voters, it could also help them consolidate their gains among suburban women. Of course, it's been a very long time since gun control was championed by Democrats, and it will require the party to realize that the conventional wisdom on gun control politics is out of date. Democrats do not need to be afraid of angering voters who they have already lost, stand no chance of recovering, and no longer need to win presidential elections. Perhaps the tragedy in Newtown will prompt an overdue reassessment.
10 comments
What a horrible incident. I was at my eye doctor's when the news broke. He was from Connecticut and grew up in the same town. He was so moved he couldn't talk. It feels like we live with a bunch of savages. We will need to control to some extent either guns or people. I prefer controlling guns. The whole subject makes me sick.
- arnon1
December 14, 2012 at 8:55pm
25 minutes from where I live, where my daughter goes to school. The next town over from where my girlfriend and her daughters go to temple. We were in Newtown last weekend for a bat mitzvah. The horror here is surreal. I have no words. God help us all.
- Tristan
December 14, 2012 at 10:56pm
Since the Supreme Court doesn’t like gun control but approves of government imposing taxes, it follows that a personal property tax on fire arms could be imposed sufficient to pay for armed guards at every school and public institution. A severe penalty for not paying this tax would encourage people to turn in now expensive and unwanted guns. Anyone caught with an untaxed gun would be subject to those severe penalties getting criminals’ guns off the street. All those unemployed veterans would now have good job prospects. People can keep their guns and our schools would be protected.
- sdmcleod
December 15, 2012 at 12:03pm
Dems have managed to become mealy-mouthed terrified of voters on gun control, universal health care, financial regulation, progressive taxation, Kinesian economic policy-- you name it, BHO and Senate leaders are poster-child examples. And the sadest part is a majority or plurality of the electorate support such issues.
- drofnats1
December 15, 2012 at 7:15pm
Gun control - of course. But also one more argument for comprehensive, universal health care.
- Claris
December 16, 2012 at 8:39am
All of the above. And - why oh why have we become terrified of a minority of Americans, whose values equate "freedom" and "liberty" with the ownership of, essentially, WMD's? And who, at the same time, scorn social safety nets, affordable health care, education, and treating people and animals and environment with dignity and respect? Who attack union labor, women, "the other," in general, think it's acceptable to ignore science, art, common sense? Enough is enough.
- Sophia
December 17, 2012 at 1:33am
"Freedom and liberty", my ass. What the hell kind of freedom are you defending with the right to tote about an AR-15 and assault schoolchildren, moviegoers and mall shoppers (and police officers, natch) at your crazed whim? And if you are worried about governmental tyranny, do you think weapons like that would truly protect you?? A genuinely tyrannical government, like Syria's, comes at its domestic critics with tanks, helicopter gunships, fighter jets and ballistic missiles. No sane person thinks or argues that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to effectively protect themselves against such tools of state oppression and no drafters of the Constitution did so either -- private individuals were not allowed to own howitzers or battleships in 1793 either. There are no fool-proof solutions against gun violence, and no fool-proof solutions against incidents such as the one that happened in Newtown. There are also no fool-proof solutions against traffic accidents, but somehow America can must the ability to concur that laws requiring seat belts, air bags and anti-lock brakes, and laws that prohibit driving cars at 150 miles per hour, can reduce or mitigate the impact of traffic accidents. The same sorts of laws can be passed to reduce or mitigate the impact of mass slaughter of human beings going about their daily business by the insane or the simply angry. It is simply necessary for normal Americans -- including normal Americans who hunt, target-shoot and keep a pistol with a six-shot clip in the home for protection against burglars -- to stand up to the bigots and cynics who run the National Association for the Protection of Domestic Terrorists (a/k/a the National Rifle Association) and tell them that they have had enough.
- wildboy
December 17, 2012 at 10:56am
The President was spot-on last night. Enough. We can't go on like this. Tom Ridge was on Fox yesterday morning saying that "we talked about it after Columbine, we talked about it after Virginia Tech, we talked after . . .." Then he went on to say "The time for talking is over, now is the time for a national conversation." What? How is a "national conversation" different from talking? The time for ACTION is now. Ridge repeated what seems to be the cliche for this tragedy. "No single law will solve this. " Republicans have no problems pushing laws (single or other wise) such as the Patriot Act, or laws requiring invasive ultrasounds, or laws dealing with the imaginary voter fraud problem. But the wholesale slaughter of innocents? We're helpless? Bullshit. Grass roots action defeated the Kochs, Sheldon Adeson, and Rove in 2012. It can defeat the NRA.
- dubyadoubte
December 17, 2012 at 11:16am
Good lord. Joe Scarborough? Thinks we should put kids ahead of the NRA? Maybe this really is a turning point. I hope so.
- Sophia
December 17, 2012 at 11:31am
I'm at a loss as to how gun control equates to taking guns from citizens? This is something the democrats need to stress. Instead they just don't talk about it.
- PlanetScot
December 17, 2012 at 11:57am