Op-Ed: In Election Season, Mum’s the Word about Gun Control

By Don B. Kates Jr.

Are this year’s U.S. presidential candidates avoiding the gun issue?

Last week, San Francisco’s First District Court of Appeal struck down that city’s two-year-old law that confiscated all handguns and rendered all other guns useless by banning ammunition sales. And on March 9 of last year, a federal court of appeals invalidated District of Columbia laws that banned handguns and precluded keeping any gun for defense in the home. That case is now in the Supreme Court, which many expect will hold that such laws violate the Constitution’s guarantee that law-abiding, responsible adults may have guns to defend their homes and families.

Ironically, though these laws represent the ultimate goals of the gun “control” (actually gun ban) movement, they epitomize that movement’s political downfall. For Democratic candidates, an Eleventh Commandment has evolved: “Don’t mention guns”—while formerly anti-gun Republicans Romney and Giuliani now declare themselves faithful advocates of gun rights.

Democratic politicians are well aware that (as Bill Clinton himself says) Congressional Democrats’ anti-gun efforts caused the 1994 voter revolt which—for the first time in 50 years—gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Democrats regained Congress in 2006 because of the unpopularity of the Iraq war. But generally the Democratic victors either said nothing about guns or openly declared their support for gun rights.

...[M]odern criminological research confirms the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who gave us our Constitution’s guarantee that all law-abiding, responsible adults may have guns for defense of their homes and families. As Thomas Paine put it: “The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one [good people] deprived of the use of them; ...the weak will be come a prey to the strong.” [Writings of Thomas Paine 56 (M. Conway ed. 1894).]

The issue of national defense is helping fuel the 2008 presidential election season. But individual defense, in certain candidates’ campaign speeches, is not only easily overlooked, but judging by political history, its avoidance actually may be in the candidates’ best interest.

Click here for the entire op-ed from MWCNews.net.