Rick Perry and Rick Santorum go pheasant hunting and give
interviews before heading out. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain speak to the
National Rifle Association convention. Michele Bachmann tells People magazine
she wants to teach her daughters how to shoot because women need to be able to
protect themselves. Mitt Romney, after backing some gun control measures when
governor of Massachusetts, now presents himself as a strong supporter of the
Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.
President Barack Obama, on the other hand, is virtually
silent on the issue.
He has hardly addressed it since a couple months after the
January shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, when he promised to
develop new steps on gun safety in response. He has failed to do so, even as
survivors of the Arizona shooting came to Capitol Hill last week to push for
action to close loopholes in the background check system.
Democrats have learned the hard way that embracing gun
control can be terrible politics, and the 2012 presidential election is shaping
up to emphasize just how delicate the issue can be. With the election likely to
be decided largely by states where hunting is a popular pastime, like Missouri,
Ohio or Pennsylvania, candidates of both parties want to win over gun owners,
not alienate them.
For Republicans, that means emphasizing their pro-gun
credentials. But for Obama and the Democrats, the approach is trickier.
Obama's history in support of strict gun control measures
prior to becoming president makes it difficult for him to claim he's a Second
Amendment champion, even though he signed a bill allowing people to take loaded
guns into national parks. At the same time, he's apparently decided that his
record backing gun safety is nothing to boast of, perhaps because of the power
of the gun lobby and their opposition to anything that looks like gun control.
"Gun control is a fight that the administration is not
willing to pick. They're not likely to win it," said Harry Wilson, author
of a book on gun politics and director of the Institute for Policy and Opinion
Research in Virginia. "They certainly would not win it in Congress, and
it's not likely to be a winner at the polls ... It comes down to one pretty
simple word: Politics."
Administration officials say they are working to develop the
gun safety measures promised after the Giffords shooting, and they say have
taken steps to improve the background check system. White House spokesman Matt
Lehrich says the White House goal is to "protect the Second Amendment
rights of law-abiding citizens while keeping guns out of the hands of those who
shouldn't have them under existing law."
But when it comes to guns and politics, Democrats haven't
forgotten what happened in 1994. That year, President Bill Clinton was pushing
for passage of a landmark crime bill featuring a ban on assault weapons. That
November, Democrats suffered widespread election losses and lost control of the
House and the Senate. Clinton and others credited the NRA's campaigning with a
big role in the outcome. And when the assault weapons ban came up for
congressional re-authorization in 2004, it failed.
Given that history, the NRA expects to see Obama treading
carefully on guns through 2012.
"It's bad politics to be on the wrong side of the
Second Amendment at election time," said Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive
vice president. "They're trying to fog the issue through the 2012 election
and deceive gun owners into thinking he's something he's not, which is
pro-Second Amendment."
