Before Sunset

NEW YORK, NY, August 20, 2004 -- For more than a year, gun control advocates in Congress have been trying, without success, to renew the 1994 "assault weapons" ban which is scheduled to "sunset" on Sept. 13. Sen. John Kerry has consistently supported the ban, voting for the original bill ten years ago and returning to Capitol Hill on March 2 to cast a vote in favor of renewing it.

But don't expect to hear too much from Kerry when the ban, due in part to President Bush's sidestepping of a 2000 campaign position, expires next month. That's because in recent years, the gun issue has been toxic for Democrats.

In his memoir, "My Life," former President Clinton identifies the assault weapons ban as one of three pieces of legislation that cost Democrats control of the House and Senate in 1994. More recently, many analysts believe the gun issue cost former Vice President Gore critical support among white men in rural sections of the country during the 2000 race.

This year's Democratic presidential nominee is a longtime gun control supporter with the NRA rating to prove it. But some Democratic strategists are hopeful that the gun issue will not be as damaging to Kerry as it was to Gore.

Kerry supports closing the "gun-show loophole" by requiring background checks and waiting periods. He supports mandatory child-safety locks for handguns. And he opposes giving the gun industry special liability protection from lawsuits--all positions he shares with Gore.

But unlike Gore, Kerry emerged from the Democratic primaries without being pulled to the left on gun control. In 2000, by contrast, in a race that was taking place in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, Gore responded to a primary challenge from former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley by endorsing licensing by states of new handgun purchases. Gore de-emphasized the issue during the general election debates against Bush. But the dye had already been cast.

During the run up to this year's primaries, Kerry was challenged on the left by Howard Dean on a number of issues. But gun control was not one of them.

Dean was an anomaly. He hailed from a liberal state, Vermont, but one that is rural in character and populated with voters for whom hunting is a way of life. Dean argued that the "A" ratings he earned from the Vermont NRA during his tenure as governor would allow him to win back West Virginia, Montana and Tennessee for the Democrats.

Kerry sought to distinguish himself from Dean on the gun issue by chiding his relationship with the NRA. "I don't want to be the candidate of the NRA. I don't want our party to be the party of the NRA. I reject that notion," Kerry said on Oct. 3, 2003 at the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC. But Kerry never made the kind of substantive concession to the party's left wing as Gore had four years earlier.

As a combat veteran, Kerry has more credibility than most Democrats to say, as he did prior to the Iowa caucuses, "We have no business selling weapons of war on the streets of America."

Liberal antipathy towards President Bush on other issues, such as Iraq, also helps Kerry, by leading some groups that might otherwise be pushing for stronger gun control measures to bite their tongues.

Kerry is further helped by a Democratic Party platform that includes, for the first time ever, a specific statement of support for people's Second Amendment rights. "We will protect Americans' Second Amendment right to own firearms," the platform reads. The platform does not bind the party's presidential nominee. But it makes for a handy talking point.

As evident in photos of Kerry blasting pheasant, the Kerry-Edwards campaign differs from the Gore-Lieberman effort in another respect: it is actively courting hunters. Taking a page from the 2001 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Mark Warner, the Kerry-Edwards campaign looks for every opportunity to argue that the Bush Administration has "turned its back on hunters and anglers" by siding with oil, gas, mining and logging corporations.

Finally, when the economy is in worse shape, many analysts believe that cultural issues, like guns, tend to fade in importance to economic concerns, making some hunters more likely to vote their union card than their NRA card.

At a Harvard seminar following the 2000 election, Steve Rosenthal, who was the AFL-CIO's political director at the time, was asked what the Democrats should do on gun control.

"Shut the hell up," he said.

"It appears that John Kerry has heeded that advice," Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's director of public relations, concedes. "But what matters to NRA members and what matters to hunters is his record."

The NRA wasn't pleased when then-Gov. Bush said, "It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society," following a shooting at a Los Angeles-area Jewish community center in Aug. 1999. But since entering the White House, President Bush has sidestepped the issue. And today, the NRA calls it "disingenuous" for the Democratic platform to suggest the party has the same position as Bush on the "assault weapons" ban given that Kerry is co-sponsor of a bill by Sen. Frank Lautenberg which seeks not only to renew the ban but to expand it to cover more guns.

In addition to his pro-gun control Senate record, the NRA is incensed by comments Kerry made to CNN's Frank Sesno on Nov. 7, 1993. "I think you ought to tax all ammunition more," Kerry said. "Personally, I think you ought to tax guns."

The NRA is also livid about the way Kerry in the same interview spoke about bullets the NRA considers to be deer ammunition. "There is no reason in the world for these particular, these dum-dum bullets to be sold, they're people-killers ... they're not duck-killers, they're not deer-killers, they're not used for hunting, they're there to stop a human being."

The NRA, which spent a total of $20 million in 2000, promises to spend "close to" $20 million this year on television, radio, print and mail to make their case that "John Kerry is the most strident gun control candidate ever" whose "rhetoric does not match his record."

Last month, in three television ads that ran inside the Beltway, the NRA previewed the line of attack it plans on using in battleground states this fall: "Sen. Kerry, how can you talk out of both sides of your mouth and keep a straight face?"

"The gun groups are going to make some noise," says Kerry communications director Stephanie Cutter. "But the economy is still our primary focus."