WILLIAM SCHNEIDER couldn’t believe his eyes. The CNN commentator and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute felt there must be something wrong with a recent CNN poll. It showed Americans are evenly divided on whether George W. Bush, who doesn’t talk much about guns, or Al Gore, who has made gun control a theme of his presidential campaign, handles the “gun issue” better. Schneider requested the question be asked again. It was — with the same result. Meanwhile, another poll asked if Bush or Gore would do “a better job of handling gun control.” Schneider, a polling expert, thought this question invited people to say Gore. Nonetheless, Bush won by a half-dozen percentage points.
The gun issue isn’t supposed to be playing this way in 2000. Democrats, liberals, the press, most of the Washington political community, and even a good number of Republicans thought the politics of the issue had been transformed, post-Columbine. Indeed, the massacre at the Colorado high school a year ago did prompt a rise in public support for more gun control. And the Senate responded within weeks by passing a stringent new law restricting gun sales and production. When the House balked, it seemed a major issue had been created. No longer would the intensity be on the side of the National Rifle Association and gun owners. Now, it would be with middle-class voters, suburbanites, soccer moms, and others who favor sweeping gun control, including registration of all handguns. They would force queasy Republicans to swallow gun control or else lose in this fall’s election.
Quite the opposite has happened. The intensity has shifted — strengthening the foes of gun control. NRA membership is soaring and may reach 4 million by year’s end. Most Republicans feel politically secure on the gun issue, and President Clinton has jettisoned the not-so-popular phrase “gun control” in favor of “gun safety.” Democrats made gun control the overriding issue last fall in the Virginia and New Jersey legislative races. The result was GOP capture of both houses of the Virginia legislature for the first time ever and easy Republican retention of the New Jersey state-house. In poll after poll, public support for gun control has dipped. More important, public belief that more gun restrictions are the answer to gun violence, especially among youths, has faded. “What has always been true of the gun issue is still true,” says Schneider. “The issue has far more salience for gun owners than for gun control advocates. Gun owners are always ready to vote this issue. Gun controllers rarely vote the issue.”
A new twist to the debate has been crucial in undermining the drive for gun control. This is the argument, stridently voiced by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, that existing gun laws should be enforced before any new ones are enacted. “Finally, their side has an argument the public is receptive to,” says Karlyn Bowman, who monitors polls for AEI. NRA officials are apologetic about the crude way LaPierre made his point on national TV. He accused the Clinton administration of not enforcing gun laws to insure a certain level of gun violence in the country, thus spurring support for gun control. But LaPierre’s tactic worked. “It caused people to pay attention to what he is saying,” says Bowman. “They listened to his argument.”
Polls bear this out. A survey in April by ABC News/Washington Post asked whether “passing stricter gun control laws” or “stricter enforcement of existing laws” is the best way to curb gun violence. Enforcement was preferred by 53 percent to 33 percent. In a survey for YRock, the Young Republican website, GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked for reaction to this statement: “Passing gun laws is what keeps politicians’ careers alive. Enforcing gun laws is what keeps the rest of us alive.” Sixty percent agreed, 34 percent didn’t. Another Luntz question asked what would be more successful in reducing crimes committed with guns. Enforcement of existing laws and tough sentencing beat more gun control with trigger locks and gun show restrictions by better than 2-to-1.
Republicans have not only jumped on enforcement as an alternative to gun control, they’ve forced Democrats to go along. By championing enforcement, Republicans have deftly adjusted to a change in the gun debate that Democrats were certain would help their side. As recently as two years ago, Republicans figured they could ignore the gun debate entirely. Now, given the level of media obsession with guns, that’s risky. The enforcement issue gives Republicans a popular theme. In this regard, they first seized on Project Exile, a program in Richmond, Virginia, in which criminals who use guns are prosecuted in federal court, where trials are swifter and sentences harsher. The Clinton administration privately opposed expansion of Project Exile until last year when a Senate hearing on it was scheduled. The Saturday before, the president reversed the policy and used his radio address to praise the program.
In the House, Republicans believe they have, as one aide put it, “totally shifted the debate to enforcement and other issues.” Just this month, they pushed through a bill that offers grants to help states work with federal prosecutors and impose mandatory jail sentences on criminals who use or carry guns during a crime. These sentences would be added to the prison term for the crime itself. Democratic leaders opposed the measure, but it passed 358 to 60. The New York Times reported the next day that Republicans were “conceding vulnerability on a hot campaign issue.” Actually, Republicans were exploiting an advantage.
To see how safe Republicans really feel on the gun issue, I met recently with what amounted to a focus group of a half-dozen House members. They included one from a suburban district in the Northeast, one from a Mid-western city, another from the Mid-west suburbs. All but one represent swing districts. When confronted with the theory that the politics of the issue now favors the gun controllers, they all disagreed strongly. On separate gun legislation now before a deadlocked House-Senate conference, they feel they’ve satisfied both sides. They’re for background checks on purchasers at gun shows, pleasing soccer moms, but only for checks that have NRA approval.
What if this gun legislation — not the enforcement bill — remains bottled up? No problem. The public has dramatically lost faith in gun control as a solution to violence in America, notably to gun violence in schools. What would have the greatest impact in reducing school violence? Only 10 percent said gun control in the Luntz poll, while 77 percent said teaching about right and wrong. Given other choices, 84 percent said parental involvement was the answer, while 14 percent answered gun control.
One person who hasn’t been surprised by voters’ attitudes about guns is Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief strategist. Bush, of course, echoes the Republican line about first enforcing, and then tinkering with, existing gun laws. Rove characterizes the presidential race as between “one guy who says the answer is more gun control” and “the other guy who says we’ve got laws on the books people are breaking . . . and while we need a few improvements, we need to send a message that when you use a gun, you go to jail.” The second guy wins 60 percent to 20 percent, according to Rove. He exaggerates, but he and Bush understand that the new politics of gun control are a lot like the old.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
