Did the 2008 elections give gun control a mandate?

By Chad D. Baus

In March 2008, a Gallup poll found that an overwhelming majority of the United States public—73%—believes that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of Americans to own firearms. Yet, to hear the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control Inc.) tell it, America voted overwhelmingly in support of gun control just a few months later.

Consider the following from a Brady bunch report published just hours after the polls closed last November, and entitled "Guns and the 2008 Elections - Common Sense Gun Laws Won, the NRA Lost, & What it Means.":

The 2008 election marked a major victory for common sense gun laws. Never in our nation’s history have we had an incoming President and Vice President more supportive of strong gun laws.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence strongly endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket, and for good reason. Barack Obama has consistently supported strong sensible gun violence prevention laws throughout his career, and Joe Biden has been a leader in Congress for strong gun laws.

...The fact that Obama and Biden won — and won convincingly, even in many states
with heavy rates of gun ownership — also demonstrated that support for common sense gun laws is a winning message across the country and is not a dangerous political "wedge" issue that must be avoided by politicians. As was the case in 2006, there is no evidence that any candidate, at any level, lost because of support for sensible gun laws. Supporters of common sense gun laws won in Senate, House and state races across the country.

... The election of Barack Obama and other supporters of common sense gun laws, and the defeat of many NRA candidates, proves — again — that politicians do not risk electoral defeat if they cross the gun lobby.

Contained in those three statements is the version of history the gun ban lobby hopes to convince members of Congress to accept as reality. But that is likely to be a tough sell, given that Obama and Biden did everything they could during the campaign to distance themselves from their anti-gun records.

Think about it for a moment. How could gun control have won when the Democrats did everything they could to convince voters that gun control wasn't on the ballot?

The other historical theme being promoted by the self-proclaimed victors is that the NRA was "one of the biggest losers in the 2008 elections..."

Under a heading entitled "Brady Candidates Won Nationwide", the report brags that "100% of Brady endorsed candidates defeated NRA “A” rated or endorsed candidates in the U.S. Senate, and that "84% of Brady endorsed candidates defeated NRA “A” rated or endorsed candidates in the U.S. House."

"100%" sounds like a lot, "84%" doesn't sound too shabby either. But in typical fashion, Brady's shady statisticians offer no hard numbers. The NRA's Political Victory Fund, on the other hand, gave specifics in a very frank post-election press release by NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox:

...[T]he NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) endorsed 23 candidates for the U.S. Senate, of whom at least 14 were victorious—with the outcome of three races still undetermined at press time. NRA-PVF endorsed 248 candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and at least 216 of these candidates won their races.

Later on, Cox notes that "while Republicans suffered significant losses, fewer seats shifted to the anti-gun side. Why? Because many pro-gun Republicans lost to pro-gun Democrats."

Which brings me back to the Brady's ridiculous attempt at defining this election as a major victory for gun control, and that "the NRA’s supposed electoral power was...exposed as a myth."

From a recent FOXNews.com op-ed by Professor John R. Lott Jr:

I always questioned Obama’s claims and argued that up until the presidential campaign his whole career had supported gun bans, but there was no lack of politicians and advisers who attested to Obama’s sincerity on the issue. Obama and his campaign constantly tried to explain away his past support for gun control as being mistakes by subordinates who had incorrectly explained his positions.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, promised reporters last August about Obama: “He ain't going to take your gun away. He ain't ever going to take your gun away.” Joe Biden made similar statements while campaigning in places such as rural southwest Virginia. An Obama adviser, Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, said on Hugh Hewitt's national radio show last fall that "I think that he has always been an individual rights person on the Second Amendment." Another adviser, Professor Cass Sunstein at Harvard, told Time Magazine in June: "Obama has always expressed a belief that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms." The list goes on. It was a constant theme of the campaign.

Just before the November election, the Los Angeles Times questioned the honesty of those who questioned Obama’s stand on guns, because "Obama does not oppose gun rights. He has made a point of pounding this home to rural audiences, telling them he has no intention of taking their guns away: not their shotguns, not their handguns, not anything."

There are few such issues that the Obama campaign promised over and over again during the campaign.

Those of us who follow the issue closely weren't fooled, but there was plenty of evidence that too many every-day blue-collar, gun-owning Americans felt comfortable enough with Obama's stance on guns to be able to cast a vote for him out of economic concerns.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in favor of individual right to bear arms (a position Obama was on record as opposing until it became the opinion of the High Court), the establishment media and the Obama campaign worked hard to convince Americans that gun control had become a "non-issue."

So what intellectually honest person would now conclude, as the Brady bunch claims, that the 2008 election gives anti-gun politicians a mandate?

If anything, Obama's behavior during the campaign proves just how powerful the gun issue is in American politics - so powerful a man whose whole career had supported gun bans had to spend a significant portion of his campaign energy convincing voters not to pay attention to his anti-gun record.

The Brady's spin this by stating that "Barack Obama’s campaign...provided a model to politicians of how to talk about the gun issue." (Translation: "If you want to beat a pro-gun candidate, do like Barack did - lie, and pretend to be one.")

The Brady report crows that "the incoming Obama-Biden administration represents an historic opportunity for this country to responsibly address our gun violence problem."[6] I hope and pray that the new administration will address our gun violence (i.e. crime) problem. But they simply can't do so if they revert to the tired, old Clinton administration strategy of restricting and eliminating guns, which is what the Brady campaign is again proposing.

If the Obama administration truly wants to do something about reducing crime, they should bear in mind that the latest FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that, in 2007, the major U.S. cities with the highest murder rates were cities with severe, Brady-style gun control: Detroit (where Michigan law requires a permit to purchase a handgun and required handgun registration); Baltimore (where Maryland law prohibits private handgun sales and requires a seven-day waiting period on handgun sales by dealers) and the District of Columbia (where in 2007 handguns were still banned and all firearms were required to be registered).[1]

If the Obama administration truly wants to do something about reducing crime, they should bear in mind that the latest FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that, in 2007, as it has been in years past, Right-to-Carry states had lower violent crime rates, on average, that the rest of the country: Total violent crime in Right-to-Carry states was 24 percent lower, murder 28 percent lower, robbery 50 percent and aggravated assault 11 percent.[2]

And before the Obama administration follows through on its threats to renew the Clinton gun ban on military-style semi-automatic rifles, they should bear in mind that that the latest FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that, in 2007, 32 percent of murders were committed without firearms of any sort - knives accounted for 12 percent; hands and feet, six percent and blunt objects, four percent. Rifles and shotguns (semi-automatic and otherwise) accounted for three percent each, and, typically, guns classed as "assault weapons" have accounted for about one percent.[3]

If Barack Obama truly wants to remembered for making a change we can believe in, he will renounce his long-time support for the failed gun control agenda that his old friends in the gun ban lobby are promoting, and instead call on Congress to send him laws that punish criminals, and restore the individual right to keep and bear arms to all law-abiding Americans.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.

Footnotes:
[1] FBI Crime Report is Bad News for Anti-Gunners, January 2009, America's 1st Freedom

[2] ibid

[3] ibid