An Old Gun Fighter Speaks

Doug Mataconis makes the case that Democrats should at least heed Big Dog's advice and keep in mind that pissing off the bitter clingers isn't going to help get anything passed.

If there’s any Democrat in the United States who has experience in taking on America’s gun owners and the Second Amendment, it’s Bill Clinton. Mere weeks before the 1994 Presidential Election, the United States Congress passed, and Clinton signed, a controversial Assault Weapons Ban. Indeed, while the conventional wisdom continues to hold that the primary motivation behind the massive Republican victories in the 1994 Congressional Elections was due in large part to the President’s failed effort at health care reform, many political observers have contended for years that it was the Administration’s push on the Assault Weapons Ban, and the political backlash that it unleashed from the National Rifle Association and other groups, that played the most significant role in the tidal wave that handed control of both Houses of Congress to the Republican Party.

I'm going to have to say that I disagree with that.  I still think "HillaryCare" did it, not to mention the House Post Office scandal.  The Dems were headed to defeat long before the Violent Crime Control and Prevention Act passed.  Let's remember that the bill passed the House with a number of Republicans you might recognize:  John Kasich, Jon Kyl, Illena Ros-Lehtinen, Olympia Snowe, 46 of them in all.  In the Senate, seven Republican broke ranks, including Arlen Specter and Nancy Kessebaum, as well as Linc Chafee.  Too many Republicans signed up for the bill for it to be the reason why the Dems were wiped out.

As far as Clinton's advice goes, Doug's take:

Clinton injects a little bit of political reality into the post-Newtown gun control conversation. The “gun culture” of which many gun control activists so derisively speak isn’t just limited to the South. It’s a strong force in the Midwest, especially among hunters, and in the west. Indeed, even in California there area millions of people who own guns and who would resist any effort to take those guns away. We live in a nation were that are nearly as many firearms in the open market as there are people. That suggests the very simply idea that draconian gun control laws are, for the most part, not going to succeed in taking significant action to restrict Second Amendment rights because of the legislative power that the so-called “gun lobby” can bring to bear. Results will vary from state to state, of course, but nationally it seems fairly clear to me that America’s gun owners and those of us, such as myself, who still support the right of American citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights, remain a force to be reckoned with. As Bill Clinton told his fellow Democrats, that’s something the advocates of further gun control ought to keep in mind.

Except for the fact that what President Obama has proposed isn't at all "significant action to restrict the Second Amendment."  It's being called that, and in fact has been called that for four years when President Obama was actually making it easier to obtain weapons, so much so that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rated him an across-the-board "F".   Much like "Obama is weak on immigration enforcement and national security" when the facts were completely the opposite, the notion that Obama is a gun grabber is complete nonsense.

If somebody can show me where President Obama is proposing to take guns away from people who already lawfully own them, that's different.  He has done nothing of the sort.