Month: September 2007

I’ve been looking at the speeches the various candidates gave before the NRA’s Celebration of American Values, and I’ll offer up a few impressions. I’ll split this up into a few posts, because there’s a lot that was talked about, and it’ll get too long otherwise.

Senator John McCain

McCain, whether you like him or not, has generally been pretty friendly to gun owners over his career. I have my differences with him on several gun issues, which he acknowledges:

Over the years, we’ve not agreed on every issue. We had differences over my efforts to standardize sales procedures at gun shows and to clean up our campaign finance system. I understand and respect your position. But while we may disagree on the means, we do agree on the need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and, in the light of the number of my colleagues who have been disgraced or under investigation and are worried about indictment, agree that Washington needs cleaning up. Americans have lost trust in their government, and that trust must be restored.

But I’m as big a believer in the first amendment as I am in the second, and I can’t abide by a method of restoring trust that places limits on the speech of its citizens to criticize candidates for federal office. I will never forgive John McCain for McCain-Feingold. He either repudiates that, or he won’t get my vote.

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney tells us:

Now, as governor, I worked closely with the NRA and the Gun Owners Action League to advance legislation that expanded the rights of gun owners in my state. And my door was always open to you, and that will continue to be the case if I’m elected president. Together, we reduced burdensome bureaucratic regulations, we made it easier for people to exercise their constitutional rights.

This would be Mitt’s definition of working closely:

“Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony on July 1 with legislators, sportsmen’s groups and gun safety advocates. “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”

Now, as it happens, the bill Romney signed actually helped out gun owners in Massachusetts in a number of ways, and kept the federal exemptions to the assault weapons ban in place when the federal ban expired. But you’d think from the Governor’s rhetoric, he was, you know, pandering or something. Mitt Romney? Pander? Naaah. At least he said he’d repeal McCain-Feingold:

And I’ll ask Congress to repeal the McCain-Feingold law which sought to impose restrictions on the First Amendment rights of groups like the NRA to advocate for issues we care about. Some parts have already been declared unconstitutional. We ought to get rid of the entire bill.

I couldn’t agree more, but can’t help but feel Mitt’s lips are chafing against my ass a bit too harshly. I’m surprised he didn’t offer to not only repeal the law, but personally eat the paper it’s written on at the Banquet for the Annual NRA Members Meeting.

Jacob picks up on a statement by Chris Cox:

“Historically, we have not gotten involved in primaries. We traditionally wait until after the conventions,” said Chris Cox, head lobbyist for the NRA. “That being said, given the candidates and the process and the front-loading of the primaries, it is a possibility that we could get involved in one of these presidential primaries.”

And comments:

What I would do in NRAs case would be a targeted mailing in certain states stating Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson are the prefered candidates in each party’s primary. No need to make up separate mailers, just list both guys on a single postcard to keep costs down. I wouldn’t give anyone an endorsement until after the primary.

I would consider only half of that.  I think it could be smart for NRA to become involved in the Democratic primary, because Bill Richardson has been a real friend to gun owners in the past, and all the other serious contenders are absolutely no friends of ours.  If you can give Bill enough of a boost to where he’s a serious threat to the other two candidates, you force Hillary and Obama to spend more money defeating their primary opponents.  It also will hold the Republican candidates feet to the fire, with the prospects a pro-gun democrat winning the endorsement in the general election.   It wouldn’t make much sense, in my opinion, to get involved if Richardson is a lost cause.

I don’t think under any circumstance it makes sense to back a candidate in the Republican primary.  If you pick a losing candidate, the eventual nominee is going to hold it against you that you actively helped his opponent.  In the general election, it might come down to two candidates hating you, whereas if you had stayed out, you might have been able to work with the eventual nominee, even if he turned out to be less than ideal.

I agree with Jacob that it makes sense to get involved in primaries because it’s easier to affect change in them, but one must use caution.  When you have multiple candidates vying for NRA’s affections, as is happening now in the current Republican primary, it wouldn’t be smart politics, in my view, to endorse one of them.  If you have a pro-gun challenger sparring with all anti-gun candidates, then it might make sense.