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Pandering to the Right? (pr FOR our rights?)
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Pandering to the Right?
The Bush administration looks to broaden gun rights. What happened to winning over the soccer moms
May 10 - George W. Bush ran on education, compassion and a strong military. He implied he was a centrist on the major social issues of our time, namely guns and abortion.
HE DIDN'T SAY anything about expanding gun rights, which would have cost him support among soccer moms. But this week in an abrupt shift, the Bush administration is advocating a new interpretation of the Constitution that would significantly broaden gun rights and overturn decades of established law. What galls Democrats is that Bush is likely to score political points for this new stance in the post-9-11 world where machismo rules, and homeland security to many people means a gun in their home.
Advertisement
Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling
by Eleanor Clift
Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Supreme Court in two legal filings that individuals have a constitutional right to own a gun that is broader than the wording in the Second Amendment. If the High Court accepts Ashcroft's interpretation, gun ownership would be enshrined in a context far beyond the Founding Fathers' original intent to preserve a militia as a bulwark against government. Ashcroft telegraphed his wish to expand gun rights in a letter to the National Rifle Association a year ago, and nobody doubts that he is acting from long-held personal belief. But in a country awash in guns (200 million in private hands at last count), getting hold of a gun is laughably easy. Expanding gun rights is gratuitous and has to be seen as throwing a bone to the NRA and its adherents on the right.
Bush rarely misses a chance to pander to his right-wing base. But here's where the politics get tricky and have that "made by Karl Rove" label. The same administration briefs that seek to broaden gun rights ask the court to also uphold restrictions on gun ownership. One case involves a man charged with illegal possession of a firearm while under a restraining order because of domestic violence; the other a man convicted with the illegal possession of a machine gun. Both had invoked the Second Amendment right to bear guns in their defense. While Bush rewarded the NRA with the language it yearns to hear, he also committed his Justice Department to defend the constitutionality of gun-control laws.
The gun debate has changed dramatically since Bill Clinton was president and threatens both parties with irrelevance if they don't shift their stance. Republicans realize that if they move too far to the right they risk losing much of the electorate. The latest Field Poll in California reveals the chasm. California Gov. Gray Davis has a 20-point advantage over Republican challenger Bill Simon on the gun issue and on abortion rights. Yet Democrats who once viewed gun control as a hugely effective issue for their side are now so skittish they are afraid to bring up the subject. In exit polls during the 2000 presidential election, 40 percent of the electorate admitted to having a gun-and they vote. Georgia Gov. Zell Miller says gun control is not about policy, it's about values. And until Democrats learn how to talk about guns in a way that respects gun owners, they won't win elections. Some Democrats blame Al Gore's loss in Tennessee, his home state, on Gore's inability to finesse the issue. If Gore had won Tennessee, he would be president today.
The conventional wisdom is that the gun-control debate is passe. Five years after the Columbine shooting, where some of the guns used to kill were obtained illegally at a gun show, the Senate has yet to decide whether and how to close the so-called gun-show loophole. If it weren't for John McCain and his seemingly irrepressible urge to tweak the administration, that would be the end of the story. But McCain, together with Democrat Joseph Lieberman, will soon prove conventional wisdom wrong. Their bill to require background checks at gun shows is expected to pass the Senate this spring, and McCain has promised to do what it takes to attach the measure to legislation that would get to Bush's desk for his signature.
McCain deserves much of the credit for reaching across the aisle and forging a workable compromise. Bush promised to bring a different governing model to Washington that would cross party lines, but it's McCain who is making that pledge a reality, not Bush, and Bush hates every minute of McCain's success. On the gun issue, Bush is the NRA's best friend in Washington, while McCain is the NRA's nemesis. When McCain led the fight on campaign-finance reform, the NRA funded a recall effort against him in his home state of Arizona. The effort fizzled; campaign-finance reform passed; and now the NRA is about to lose another big one to McCain.
The lobbying group behind the McCain-Lieberman effort, Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), is a relative newcomer to the gun debate. Founded and funded by Andrew McKelvey, the billionaire creator of Monster.com, AGS debuted in August 2000 and that fall outspent the NRA and pushed through referenda in Colorado and Oregon to require background checks at gun shows. In radio ads playing inside the Beltway this week and in targeted states, AGS ties the need for gun-show legislation to fighting terrorism, citing three cases where known terrorists were shopping for guns. AGS has gotten criticism in some liberal circles for its eagerness to embrace basic gun rights and for compromising too much with the gun lobby. But the group's president, Jon Cowan, defends the approach as realistic in today's political climate, and says the days when the extremes in either party could prevail in the gun debate are over. Once the gun-show battle concludes, AGS will focus on enforcing and toughening gun-control laws already on the books. Cowan notes that penalties for dealing in crack cocaine are significantly stiffer than for dealing in illegal guns. Let the NRA cheer expanded gun rights; Bush also opened the door to expanded restrictions.
c 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/750474.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The Bush administration looks to broaden gun rights. What happened to winning over the soccer moms
May 10 - George W. Bush ran on education, compassion and a strong military. He implied he was a centrist on the major social issues of our time, namely guns and abortion.
HE DIDN'T SAY anything about expanding gun rights, which would have cost him support among soccer moms. But this week in an abrupt shift, the Bush administration is advocating a new interpretation of the Constitution that would significantly broaden gun rights and overturn decades of established law. What galls Democrats is that Bush is likely to score political points for this new stance in the post-9-11 world where machismo rules, and homeland security to many people means a gun in their home.
Advertisement
Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling
by Eleanor Clift
Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Supreme Court in two legal filings that individuals have a constitutional right to own a gun that is broader than the wording in the Second Amendment. If the High Court accepts Ashcroft's interpretation, gun ownership would be enshrined in a context far beyond the Founding Fathers' original intent to preserve a militia as a bulwark against government. Ashcroft telegraphed his wish to expand gun rights in a letter to the National Rifle Association a year ago, and nobody doubts that he is acting from long-held personal belief. But in a country awash in guns (200 million in private hands at last count), getting hold of a gun is laughably easy. Expanding gun rights is gratuitous and has to be seen as throwing a bone to the NRA and its adherents on the right.
Bush rarely misses a chance to pander to his right-wing base. But here's where the politics get tricky and have that "made by Karl Rove" label. The same administration briefs that seek to broaden gun rights ask the court to also uphold restrictions on gun ownership. One case involves a man charged with illegal possession of a firearm while under a restraining order because of domestic violence; the other a man convicted with the illegal possession of a machine gun. Both had invoked the Second Amendment right to bear guns in their defense. While Bush rewarded the NRA with the language it yearns to hear, he also committed his Justice Department to defend the constitutionality of gun-control laws.
The gun debate has changed dramatically since Bill Clinton was president and threatens both parties with irrelevance if they don't shift their stance. Republicans realize that if they move too far to the right they risk losing much of the electorate. The latest Field Poll in California reveals the chasm. California Gov. Gray Davis has a 20-point advantage over Republican challenger Bill Simon on the gun issue and on abortion rights. Yet Democrats who once viewed gun control as a hugely effective issue for their side are now so skittish they are afraid to bring up the subject. In exit polls during the 2000 presidential election, 40 percent of the electorate admitted to having a gun-and they vote. Georgia Gov. Zell Miller says gun control is not about policy, it's about values. And until Democrats learn how to talk about guns in a way that respects gun owners, they won't win elections. Some Democrats blame Al Gore's loss in Tennessee, his home state, on Gore's inability to finesse the issue. If Gore had won Tennessee, he would be president today.
The conventional wisdom is that the gun-control debate is passe. Five years after the Columbine shooting, where some of the guns used to kill were obtained illegally at a gun show, the Senate has yet to decide whether and how to close the so-called gun-show loophole. If it weren't for John McCain and his seemingly irrepressible urge to tweak the administration, that would be the end of the story. But McCain, together with Democrat Joseph Lieberman, will soon prove conventional wisdom wrong. Their bill to require background checks at gun shows is expected to pass the Senate this spring, and McCain has promised to do what it takes to attach the measure to legislation that would get to Bush's desk for his signature.
McCain deserves much of the credit for reaching across the aisle and forging a workable compromise. Bush promised to bring a different governing model to Washington that would cross party lines, but it's McCain who is making that pledge a reality, not Bush, and Bush hates every minute of McCain's success. On the gun issue, Bush is the NRA's best friend in Washington, while McCain is the NRA's nemesis. When McCain led the fight on campaign-finance reform, the NRA funded a recall effort against him in his home state of Arizona. The effort fizzled; campaign-finance reform passed; and now the NRA is about to lose another big one to McCain.
The lobbying group behind the McCain-Lieberman effort, Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), is a relative newcomer to the gun debate. Founded and funded by Andrew McKelvey, the billionaire creator of Monster.com, AGS debuted in August 2000 and that fall outspent the NRA and pushed through referenda in Colorado and Oregon to require background checks at gun shows. In radio ads playing inside the Beltway this week and in targeted states, AGS ties the need for gun-show legislation to fighting terrorism, citing three cases where known terrorists were shopping for guns. AGS has gotten criticism in some liberal circles for its eagerness to embrace basic gun rights and for compromising too much with the gun lobby. But the group's president, Jon Cowan, defends the approach as realistic in today's political climate, and says the days when the extremes in either party could prevail in the gun debate are over. Once the gun-show battle concludes, AGS will focus on enforcing and toughening gun-control laws already on the books. Cowan notes that penalties for dealing in crack cocaine are significantly stiffer than for dealing in illegal guns. Let the NRA cheer expanded gun rights; Bush also opened the door to expanded restrictions.
c 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/750474.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878