Democrats and the Evil Gun Theory
John J. Cahill
April 22, 2005
Following the November 2004 elections Democrats in the West celebrated state and local victories. There were gains by Democrats in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Montana voters gave President Bush 62% of their presidential vote, elected a Democratic Governor, and put a Democratic majority in the State Legislature. While such independence on the part of western voters is not surprising, the juxtaposition of state Democratic gains with national Republican success demands analysis.
Opinion has been offered that Kerry’s attempted appeal to sportsmen was wrong and that he should have better defined himself and differentiated the Democratic Party by advocating his liberal roots and by strongly supporting gun control. The success of pro-rights Democrats at the state level indicates this analysis is not correct. Kerry was right to step up and support the Second Amendment, but he could not shake a long record that testified he did not hold the essential conviction that the rights of citizens therein are individual.
Gun control as promoted by some high profile Democrats, mostly on the east and west coasts, is founded on a belief. It is rooted in the value of life, but it contains a belief that certain guns are inherently bad or evil. The call for gun control action is fortified by heartfelt hope that we all might be, at least, a little safer if just the evil guns are identified, controlled, eliminated, restricted to police, the military, or agents of the government. This evil gun belief is false. It is not based in fact or logic. It is wrong-headed, yet the evil gun theory continues to receive support from otherwise intelligent and thoughtful Democratic leaders. Some of these same Democrats have said they oppose the war but support the troops. That is logic that one can follow. It separates the actor from the instrument. This same approach should be used on guns.
There is a phobic response to guns by those who don’t think through the relationship of the actor to the instrument. Because the response is emotional, not rational, it often shifts focus. Evil guns have been identified as too cheap and poorly constructed (Saturday night specials), too small (easy to conceal), too large (high capacity handguns), too powerful (high caliber handguns and rifles), too plastic (cannot be detected by metal detectors and x-ray – no such firearms have ever existed for public sale), too rapid firing (semi-automatics), too military (assault weapons). It is no wonder many American hunters fear it may next be their guns held up as totems of terror. Big game guns become sniper rifles that will be used by terrorists and easily available pump action shotguns become buckshot WMD’s.
Violence in our communities has been absurdly sidetracked by equipment concerns. This is the result of the superstitious assignment of spiritual or human qualities to inanimate machinery. If anyone suggested that the art of Michelangelo was the result of access to higher caliber paintbrushes, or that a word processor would have increased Shakespeare’s linguistic firepower, or that Ansel Adams would have given us landscapes that are more breathtaking with a high capacity digital camera, we would say they are foolish. We would laugh at their obvious logical errors, the art or the evil is in the actor, not the instrument.
Let’s try an analogy. When the tragedy of violence on our highways was addressed by concerned citizens there was never an equipment argument. In the anti-DUI response to needless violence it has never mattered if a driver is impaired by beer, wine, whiskey, prescription medication, or street drugs. It does not matter if the vehicle is a compact sedan, SUV, one-ton truck, an eighteen-wheeler, or a twin-turbo sports car capable of twice any legal speed. Equipment was never the argument although it could in fact matter - certainly a drunk driver is more lethal in a big rig or at 100+ mph, and does anyone really need 160 proof Rum? But the approach to violence on the highway was never sidetracked by equipment. It focused on the crime, the offender, and on individual responsibility. Drive drunk - go to jail. Drive drunk and hurt somebody - go to jail for a long time. It’s not the manufacturer who distills the spirits, not the wholesaler, distributor, retailer, not Ford, not Chevy, not Toyota – it’s the offender. It works. Drunk driving and related deaths and injuries have been reduced.
If the objects and not the acts were evil, we would find violent crime more acceptable when the murder weapon exuded a useful design. We could take solace when told a loved one’s throat was slashed with a cook's knife rather than a Rambo blade. We could sigh with some relief if a senseless school shooting was committed with a walnut-stocked sporting gun, and not one of those awful and ugly black plastic assault weapons. We could in fact reduce violence by banning high-capacity magazines as we could reduce drunk driving by selling beer in two-packs. That is all silly, and sad.
Simple, practical, realistic, political considerations must compel Democrats at every level, especially at the leadership level, to look at the results of the politics of guns in the last decade. Democrats must listen to the voices of their own voters across rural America, and in the West, and South. Democrats have been self-defeating by their promotion of gun control.
It may be emotionally satisfying to hold high a morally and intellectually superior conviction that banning evil guns is correct and it may be smugly gratifying to detest the NRA for its successful strategies, but nowhere in America has it been shown that criminals care a whit if the weapons they use for violence are legal. Democrats supporting anti-rights gun laws, laws that will predictably be followed only by law-abiding citizens, have done no good for our communities, and have done much harm to their party.
Democrats have observed but not learned this lesson. Looking back and writing about the 1994 Crime Bill, a Democrat then in D.C. offers this insight:
"Just before the House vote (on the crime bill), Speaker Tom Foley and majority leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented closely divided districts had already...defied the NRA once on the Brady bill vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Texas, told me the same thing...Jack was convinced that if we didn’t drop the ban, the NRA would beat a lot of Democrats by terrifying gun owners....Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong. The price...would be heavy casualties among its defenders." (Pages 611-612) My Life, by Bill Clinton
About the author: John J Cahill is a retired Juvenile Parole Office writing opinion from Henderson, Nevada. He is Chair of the Nevada Outdoor Democratic Caucus www.NODC.us an affiliate of the Nevada Democratic Party. He writes independently on gun and Second Amendment issues.
Opinion has been offered that Kerry’s attempted appeal to sportsmen was wrong and that he should have better defined himself and differentiated the Democratic Party by advocating his liberal roots and by strongly supporting gun control. The success of pro-rights Democrats at the state level indicates this analysis is not correct. Kerry was right to step up and support the Second Amendment, but he could not shake a long record that testified he did not hold the essential conviction that the rights of citizens therein are individual.
Gun control as promoted by some high profile Democrats, mostly on the east and west coasts, is founded on a belief. It is rooted in the value of life, but it contains a belief that certain guns are inherently bad or evil. The call for gun control action is fortified by heartfelt hope that we all might be, at least, a little safer if just the evil guns are identified, controlled, eliminated, restricted to police, the military, or agents of the government. This evil gun belief is false. It is not based in fact or logic. It is wrong-headed, yet the evil gun theory continues to receive support from otherwise intelligent and thoughtful Democratic leaders. Some of these same Democrats have said they oppose the war but support the troops. That is logic that one can follow. It separates the actor from the instrument. This same approach should be used on guns.
There is a phobic response to guns by those who don’t think through the relationship of the actor to the instrument. Because the response is emotional, not rational, it often shifts focus. Evil guns have been identified as too cheap and poorly constructed (Saturday night specials), too small (easy to conceal), too large (high capacity handguns), too powerful (high caliber handguns and rifles), too plastic (cannot be detected by metal detectors and x-ray – no such firearms have ever existed for public sale), too rapid firing (semi-automatics), too military (assault weapons). It is no wonder many American hunters fear it may next be their guns held up as totems of terror. Big game guns become sniper rifles that will be used by terrorists and easily available pump action shotguns become buckshot WMD’s.
Violence in our communities has been absurdly sidetracked by equipment concerns. This is the result of the superstitious assignment of spiritual or human qualities to inanimate machinery. If anyone suggested that the art of Michelangelo was the result of access to higher caliber paintbrushes, or that a word processor would have increased Shakespeare’s linguistic firepower, or that Ansel Adams would have given us landscapes that are more breathtaking with a high capacity digital camera, we would say they are foolish. We would laugh at their obvious logical errors, the art or the evil is in the actor, not the instrument.
Let’s try an analogy. When the tragedy of violence on our highways was addressed by concerned citizens there was never an equipment argument. In the anti-DUI response to needless violence it has never mattered if a driver is impaired by beer, wine, whiskey, prescription medication, or street drugs. It does not matter if the vehicle is a compact sedan, SUV, one-ton truck, an eighteen-wheeler, or a twin-turbo sports car capable of twice any legal speed. Equipment was never the argument although it could in fact matter - certainly a drunk driver is more lethal in a big rig or at 100+ mph, and does anyone really need 160 proof Rum? But the approach to violence on the highway was never sidetracked by equipment. It focused on the crime, the offender, and on individual responsibility. Drive drunk - go to jail. Drive drunk and hurt somebody - go to jail for a long time. It’s not the manufacturer who distills the spirits, not the wholesaler, distributor, retailer, not Ford, not Chevy, not Toyota – it’s the offender. It works. Drunk driving and related deaths and injuries have been reduced.
If the objects and not the acts were evil, we would find violent crime more acceptable when the murder weapon exuded a useful design. We could take solace when told a loved one’s throat was slashed with a cook's knife rather than a Rambo blade. We could sigh with some relief if a senseless school shooting was committed with a walnut-stocked sporting gun, and not one of those awful and ugly black plastic assault weapons. We could in fact reduce violence by banning high-capacity magazines as we could reduce drunk driving by selling beer in two-packs. That is all silly, and sad.
Simple, practical, realistic, political considerations must compel Democrats at every level, especially at the leadership level, to look at the results of the politics of guns in the last decade. Democrats must listen to the voices of their own voters across rural America, and in the West, and South. Democrats have been self-defeating by their promotion of gun control.
It may be emotionally satisfying to hold high a morally and intellectually superior conviction that banning evil guns is correct and it may be smugly gratifying to detest the NRA for its successful strategies, but nowhere in America has it been shown that criminals care a whit if the weapons they use for violence are legal. Democrats supporting anti-rights gun laws, laws that will predictably be followed only by law-abiding citizens, have done no good for our communities, and have done much harm to their party.
Democrats have observed but not learned this lesson. Looking back and writing about the 1994 Crime Bill, a Democrat then in D.C. offers this insight:
"Just before the House vote (on the crime bill), Speaker Tom Foley and majority leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented closely divided districts had already...defied the NRA once on the Brady bill vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Texas, told me the same thing...Jack was convinced that if we didn’t drop the ban, the NRA would beat a lot of Democrats by terrifying gun owners....Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong. The price...would be heavy casualties among its defenders." (Pages 611-612) My Life, by Bill Clinton
About the author: John J Cahill is a retired Juvenile Parole Office writing opinion from Henderson, Nevada. He is Chair of the Nevada Outdoor Democratic Caucus www.NODC.us an affiliate of the Nevada Democratic Party. He writes independently on gun and Second Amendment issues.
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