Gun control is a perilous issue for President Barack Obama (Exhibit A: his infamous statement in the 2008 campaign that working class voters “cling to gunsâ€) so the push for new restrictions following the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., puts the president in an especially tricky political predicament.
Obama has supported most major gun and ammunition control initiatives during a decade and a half in public life, including renewing the expired ban on semiautomatic assault rifles. But while he has an unambiguously liberal record on guns, he talks about the issue using muted, nonconfrontational tones engineered to avoid alienating gun-friendly voters, a huge proportion of the electorate that has steadily drifted away from Obama.
That pattern has held true, and then some, in the wake of the assassination attempt against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others earlier this month.
White House officials have remained noncommittal about an effort by liberals in the House and Senate to restrict access to the kind of high-capacity ammunition magazines that allowed suspect Jared Lee Loughner to inflict mass casualties in a matter of seconds using a single, legal handgun.
Gun control advocates say Obama, who often touts his willingness to defy prevailing political opinion in service of higher principle, has the moral responsibility to make some kind of statement on the issue â€" even if the bill has little chance of passing.
“If the president could address the issue in the State of the Union that would be really important,†says Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a major gun control group.
“If he could announce his support for the high-capacity clip legislation, that would be the best thing. The next best thing would be for him to support a presidential commission to study gun violence,†adds Helmke, the former mayor of Ft. Wayne, Ind. “But he can’t stay silent. Either way, he’s just got to do something.â€
Obama didn’t address the issue head-on during his much-heralded speech in Tucson last week. The closest he came was to say, “We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.â€
New York Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop, one of 42 House members to co-sponsor a bill limiting clip sizes to ten rounds, said “it obviously would be helpful†if Obama offered more explicit support.
“We’re not even talking about gun control here, we’re talking about limiting these crazy high-capacity clips,†Bishop added. “I don’t see how any reasonable person can oppose what we’re trying to do here. These clips aren’t used for hunting, unless you are talking about taking out a seriously energetic deer.â€
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y) â€" who lost her husband in a 1993 mass shooting on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, says it’s time for Obama to “step up†and back her measure.
Gun rights advocates, for their part, see the move as another attempt to infringe on their Second Amendment rights â€" and predict the bill would garner only about half the votes needed to pass the House.
“It smacks of political opportunism by politicians trying to take advantage of what happened in Tucson,†says Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). “It’s inappropriate. Most of us would line up against it.â€
The National Rifle Association, a powerful force over members in both parties, described the high-capacity clips, which can hold 30 rounds, as “standard equipment for self-defense handguns and other firearms owned by tens of millions of Americans.â€
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, briefing reporters last week, rebuffed repeated attempts to nail down the administration’s positions on the clip bill or on various proposals making it harder for people with emotional or mental problems to obtain weapons.
“Obviously we are and have been focused on the important healing process,†said Gibbs, who repeated those comments this week.
“We will have an opportunity to evaluate ideas and proposals that may be brought forth as a result of the circumstances and the facts in this case. The president … supports the assault weapons ban, and we continue to do so. And I think we all strive, regardless of party, to ensure that we are doing everything we can to reduce violence. We will have an opportunity to evaluate some of the other proposals.â€
When asked whether Obama will take up the issue of guns at next Tuesday’s State of the Union speech â€" White House officials said they know of no current plans to include the issue in his address, although plans could change.
“A number of proposal have been put forward in the days since these tragic shootings, and we’re going to be taking a close look at all of them,†said an Obama aide.
Still, Obama has been a fairly consistent backer of gun control laws since his days in the Illinois state Senate when he opposed a bill to allow homeowners the right to shoot intruders that superseded local laws. He’s also backed local restrictions on handgun ownership, at least in principle.
Yet he’s tread ever so lightly on the issue recently, especially during the campaign, saying he believed that Washington’s municipal handgun ban was constitutional but shedding few tears when the Supreme Court overturned the measure in 2008. At the time, he told an interviewer “we’ve got to move beyond the conflicts on this issue.â€
All his calibration has earned him few friends in the gun rights community and his careful public positioning was seriously undercut when a 1996 candidate’s questionnaire surfaced indicating he backed state laws “ban[ning] the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.â€
Obama’s campaign later claimed the form was filled out quickly by an aide for his failed congressional campaign â€" and that Obama had never seen the response.
But the biggest blow came in April 2008 when a tape surfaced from a California fundraiser in which Obama was quoted, claiming that blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana “cling to guns or religion†during times of economic upheaval. The comments cost him dearly in his primary campaign against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who used them to solidify her lead among working class voters.
The first time Obama confronted the gun issue as president was in February, 2009, when Attorney General Eric Holder, addressing the problem of cross-border gun smuggling from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels, promised a “few gun-related changes†â€" led by the re-passage of the assault weapon ban which expired in 2004.
Obama seemed to reel Holder back in a short time later, telling reporters “none of us are under any illusion that reinstating the ban would be easy†â€" adding that he planned to focus instead on improving “enforcement of existing laws.â€
Even gun control proponents say the president’s silence is understandable, at least from a political perspective. Any gun control measure faces the longest of odds in either chamber, with many moderate Democrats joining a solid bloc of Republicans in opposition and any move Obama makes would anger white male non-urban voters â€" a demographic already deserting Obama in droves.
Only 28 percent of those polled by CNN/Opinion Research last week said the shootings made it more likely they would back stricter gun laws â€" although more than half of those surveyed admitted that purchase laws played some role in the incident.
“I think the president should get involved in this. But I understand the fact that he doesn’t want to expend political capital on something that’s going to fail,†says Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) who backs the McCarthy bill.
“I had a friend ask me, ‘Do you think a [gun control] bill would pass if someone went out and shot another House member last weekend?’ And I had to say no. Support for guns is just that powerful around here.â€
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Article Source - Politico
