Think the Democrats Won’t Take Your Guns? Think Again. [Or don't?]
Countertop argues that the make-up of the new U.S. Senate is predominantly pro-gun, and suggests that gun owners have little to fear in the way of new gun control from the federal government. I couldn’t disagree more. For one thing, some of his Senator-by-Senator designations are clearly off. The original version of his post, for example, listed Claire McCaskill as “pro-gun,” when in fact she is an anti-gun zealot. Similarly, he originally listed the sorta-pro-gun-on-a-good-day Russ Feingold as pro-gun simply because he’s mastered standard English well enough to parse a sentence. By that logic, we should count him as a champion of the First Amendment, as well. Those two errors have been corrected, but others have not. Richard Lugar is a pretty solidly anti-gun Senator, notwithstanding the fact that he is (1) a Republican, (2) from a gun-friendly state, and (3) named after a gun himself. Similarly Elizabeth Dole, whom he also counts as pro-gun, has a mixed record on guns at best, though to her credit she did vote against renewing the “assault” weapons ban in 2004. Based on those two examples alone (and I don’t doubt there may be others), the breakdown among pro-gunners, anti-gunners and fence sitters in the Senate is not 48-18-34, but 46-19-35, or worse.
Regardless of the precise numbers (let’s assume that the real ones are similar to Countertop’s), I don’t see any basis for Countertop’s glib conclusion that we should “feel better” because almost half of the Senate is solidly pro-gun, or perhaps because solid pro-gunners outnumber the hard-core prohibitionists. Total prohibition of all firearms has never been a realistic goal at the federal level, so anyone who’s comfortable with any level of gun control short of total prohibition, and doesn’t have the misfortune of living in D.C., will do fine under the current Senate, the last one, or any other. But for those of us who are not OK with Brady II an exhumed “assault” weapons ban, or any other federal regulations every middle-ranked Senator can be counted on to support, we have plenty to worry about. Don’t forget, the “Republican” Senate in the 108th Congress voted 52-47 to renew the ban in 2004. Does anyone seriously think the next Senate, with anti-gunner McCaskill replacing pro-gunner Jim Talent and no pro-gunners replacing anti-gunners anywhere, will be more pro-gun than the last?
Under the entry for Tennessee, Countertop writes “and congrats, the Ds can’t defeat a filibuster of any anti gun legislation.” I think it is highly optimistic, if not downright delusional, to assume any Democrat, however pro-gun, will join a filibuster against his own party. Equally unrealistic is any supposition that the squishy moderates from either party will participate, particularly since any federal gun law likely to come down the pike is one they would in fact support. Assume, for example, that the first anti-gun law to come up for a vote is a renewal of the now-defunct “assault” weapons ban. That’s an easy choice since it is the only gun law President Bush has committed himself to supporting. Assume further every Senator who voted on the proposed extension in 2004 will vote the same way again, and that everyone else will vote as Countertop’s designations imply (where “middle” means “anti”). Based on these assumptions, and the assumption that only Republicans will join a filibuster against a bill that is strongly supported by most or all of the Democratic Party leadership, and we’re left with 41 Senators – exactly the number we need to sustain a filibuster. All this assumes, of course, that Elizabeth Dole, Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Arlen Specter and John Sununu, to name only a few, can all be trusted to toe the line.
Finally, can we PLEASE, once and for all, retire this silly “Democrats won’t grab guns, they learned the hard way in 1994″ canard? If the Dems learned anything at all in that election, they learned to keep quiet about gun issues during campaign season. Campaign season is over now. Even Bill Clinton, who openly acknowledged that many of the 1994 losses were attributable to gun control, did not go limp on that issue after that. For six more years, he continued to bait the NRA, sic the ATF on anyone who crossed him, mount frivolous federal lawsuits designed to bankrupt the entire gun industry, and generally make gun owners’ lives as miserable as he possibly could. At the end of his term, his protege Al Gore ran on a platform of continuing the AW ban and even licensing individual handgun ownership. Four years later, and a mere two years ago, NRA F-rated John Kerry promised a permanent extension of the very law that ended so many of his colleagues’ careers 10 years earlier. The Democrats have never repudiated their past support for gun control, or even for total prohibition in D.C. They just managed to keep their mouths shut on the issue for one whole election cycle, and millions of gun owners around the country happily deluded themselves into thinking the Democrats have changed. They haven’t.
Now is not the time to throw in the towel and move to Israel or Switzerland, but it is the time to start keeping an eye on your guns. All the spin in the world cannot change the basic fact that as of the new year, the anti-gun party will be back in control of both branches of Congress, and may control more than that in 2009. Bobby McFerrin had it backwards. Don’t be happy. Worry.
UPDATE: Commenter Shane makes a persuasive case that we may not have so much to worry about after all. If – and it’s a big “if” – Claire McCaskill really was the only anti-gun or middle Senator to replace a solidly pro-gun one this time around, after five solid pro-gunners replaced squishies and antis in 2004, then the answer to my rhetorical question is yes, the Senate of the 110th Congress will indeed be more pro gun than the 108th, and only slightly less pro-gun than the 109th. I caution, however, that my more sanguine outlook is purely defensive in nature, i.e., I’m fairly confident no major anti-gun laws will pass between now and ’08, but do not expect any major pro-gun bills to pass in the interim, either. So my revised prediction is that federal gun laws will remain the way they are for the balance of President Bush’s term. And I owe Countertop a beer.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:55 am
[...] Think the Democrats Won
November 15th, 2006 at 10:51 am
“The Democrats have never repudiated their past support for gun control, or even for total prohibition in D.C. They just managed to keep their mouths shut on the issue for one whole election cycle, and millions of gun owners around the country happily deluded themsleves into thinking the Democrats have changed. They haven’t.”
Nicely said.
I’ve been trying to get this across to many people, unsuccessfully, for a while. Hope you have better luck.
November 15th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Swamped at work right now.
My thoughts and response will be forthcoming on Monday.
November 15th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
They have two years and are not going to move the least popular part of their agenda. Guns are safe for now. However, minimum wage will go up, slow growth and raise youth unemployment with all the bad social consequences that engenders. We may see a new civil rights bill barring “discrimination” on sexual orientation. We will see tax hikes. What will Bush veto? Not minimum wage. Doesn’t want to be seen as anti-gay. The tax hikes may be linked to funding the war on terror and he will have no choice. So we see three intrusions into private contract and free enterprise right there and no likely succesful opposition. Guns will not be meaningfully regulated, everything esle is in jeapardy however.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
There won’t be any new civil rights for gays, unless it was something narrowly drawn like a minor hate crime sentencing enhancement. Anything broader than that is probably too controversial to pass even among Democrats, let alone among Republicans + moderate Democrats. Bush would almost certainly veto it even if it did reach his desk. If he were that concerned about appearing anti-gay, he wouldn’t have championed FMA.
I agree that the minimum wage will probably go up. I don’t know how much detectable damage that will do to the economy, but my guess is, not much. Assuming, of course, that the increase itself is also not much. As for taxes, why go through the trouble of pushing a “tax hike” when you can accomplish the same simply by not renewing the tax cuts from Bush’s first term? That way, taxes go up automatically with little fanfare (since they didn’t “raise” taxes, they only opposed “cuts”), and the next President and Congress will have to take the heat.
November 15th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
The 52-47 vote in 2004 was before the elections. You didnt state that. After the elections the vote would have reveresed to 47-52. The additions of pro gun seats in north and south carolina, florida,south dakota and louisiana gave the US senate 5 more votes to stop the awb. With the current of loss of Jim talent being the only pro gun vote to leave the senate the new vote would be 51 to 48. This is all assuming webb, tester, and casey all vote pro gun.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I think it goes without saying that a hot-button issue like that gets voted on before an election and not in the lame duck session that follows. I’m not sure why that matters, anyway, unless you have evidence that any of the Senators would have changed their votes on account of the election.
That would be the 109th Congress, the one that is still in session now. I never doubted that today’s Congress is more pro-gun than the last; the question is whether or not the forthcoming one is. Based on these five states, and assuming Missouri really was the only state that went from solidly pro-gun to anything else, then I agree that the current numbers look a lot more favorable than I had previously thought. I suppose it is also possible that at least one or two squishy moderates might have voted to renew the AW ban out of sheer inertia, but would see little reason to pass a new one now.
Perhaps I owe Countertop a beer.
November 16th, 2006 at 9:18 am
[...] A commenter at Xrlqy Wrlqy’s: The 52-47 vote in 2004 was before the elections. You didnt state that. After the elections the vote would have reveresed to 47-52. The additions of pro gun seats in north and south carolina, florida,south dakota and louisiana gave the US senate 5 more votes to stop the awb. With the current of loss of Jim talent being the only pro gun vote to leave the senate the new vote would be 51 to 48. This is all assuming webb, tester, and casey all vote pro gun. [...]
November 16th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Anti-Gun Leaders Bush, Reagan and Clinton
Prior to passage of the federal assault weapons ban (signed by then President Clinton), the importation of certain types of assault weapons from overseas had been banned during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. Such bans were ordered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) under the 1968 Gun Control Act, which grants the ATF the power to prevent the importation of guns which are not “particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.”
Under the Reagan Administration, the ATF blocked the importation of certain models of shotguns that were not suitable for sporting purposes. In 1989, during the George H.W. Bush Administration, the ATF expanded this list to permanently ban the importation of 43 types of semi-automatic assault rifles that were also determined not to have a sporting purpose.
Later, in 1998, during the Clinton Administration the ATF banned the importation of 58 additional foreign-made “copycat” assault weapons in order to close a loophole in the prior import ban.
This shows who the “liberals” are………
November 16th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Well, I actually hope the Dems have another go at guns. Trying to ban handguns would be good. Because 1) It would never pass; 2) Bush would veto (wouldn’t he?); and 3) it would kill them in 2008.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I believe that our entire ruling class, Republican and Democrat, has a different attitude towards guns than us great unwashed.
Not too long ago, I saw a news story about a Somali warlord accused of “taking up arms” against the government. He said, “I am an elder. I do not take up arms”.
I think our “elders” have nothing against guns as long as they can order the ones who take them up to be the ones who are in the line of fire.