NRA Puts Faith in Turnout
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 22, 2000; Page A04
CHARLOTTE, May 21 –– Leaders of the National Rifle Association are gambling their entire political treasury on the premise that millions of angry and fearful gun owners will turn out in force on Election Day, overwhelming supporters of gun control.
"The Democrats have essentially made a bad mistake and they are going to pay for it," said Robert K. Brown, editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine and an NRA board member, at the NRA's annual convention. "It doesn't matter what the mainstream is. What is important is, who will vote? Gun owners vote when they are mad or fearful and they are both this time around."
The NRA is banking on reviving a strategy that proved a winner for three decades after gun control became a national issue in the wake of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Even if polls suggest majority or plurality support for gun control, only gun owners vote in substantial numbers on the issue. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, gun control was viewed as a "third rail" issue, political death to anyone except urban Democrats with few gun-owning voters.
To back up this view, gun rights advocates could point to elections ranging from the 1970 defeat of Maryland Sen. Joseph D. Tydings to the 1994 vote against House Democrats, who had voted for the assault weapons ban.
Vice President Gore's presidential campaign is betting that the NRA is wrong and that the Democratic nominee will be able to portray Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the NRA as "anti-family" advocates of allowing people to carry concealed weapons in shopping centers, churches, sporting events and in their cars, and that the sheer numbers of guns in circulation makes them accessible to dangerous people.
The Gore strategy is based on the fact the politics of gun control shifted in 1996 and 1998. In a development that caused anxiety for top NRA officials, President Clinton paid no price in 1996 for his advocacy of new gun control laws, while GOP nominee Robert J. Dole and his pollsters saw gun rights as a loser and dropped the issue.
With growing numbers of reports of gun violence, a widely recognized tool in voter mobilization--fear--was available to Clinton and other gun control advocates. Conversely, gun rights advocates say their constituents felt secure and had little reason to vote.
"In '96 and '98, no one in our coalition felt threatened. We had a Republican House and Senate that stopped anything terribly onerous," said Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, just elected to the NRA board.
"This year," Norquist said, "the Democrats have done an incredibly stupid thing, reintroduced gun control. They look at the polls that say 65 percent of women are for gun control. The question is intensity versus preference.
"You can always get a certain percentage to say they are in favor of some gun controls. But, are you going to vote on your control position?"
At the annual convention here, NRA leaders were unrelenting in their portrayal of Gore--and the power of the next president to appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices--as threatening full-scale government confiscation of guns.
"They are coming after the guns," warned Kayne Robinson, the NRA's No. 2 top official. "Gun owners know that if Gore is elected, they will face the day of the long sad march to the government office. They will face the tearful line with their grandfather's priceless old relic cradled in their arms, forced to hand it over to a greedy, disrespectful bureaucrat."
There was, however, an implicit recognition by NRA leaders that the organization has become highly controversial and the target of Democrats: In their speeches at the NRA convention, none of the top officials mentioned Bush by name, preventing Gore from obtaining footage to use in commercials linking the GOP nominee to an organization Democrats openly acknowledge they intend to demonize and turn into a Republican liability by Nov. 7.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 22, 2000; Page A04
CHARLOTTE, May 21 –– Leaders of the National Rifle Association are gambling their entire political treasury on the premise that millions of angry and fearful gun owners will turn out in force on Election Day, overwhelming supporters of gun control.
"The Democrats have essentially made a bad mistake and they are going to pay for it," said Robert K. Brown, editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine and an NRA board member, at the NRA's annual convention. "It doesn't matter what the mainstream is. What is important is, who will vote? Gun owners vote when they are mad or fearful and they are both this time around."
The NRA is banking on reviving a strategy that proved a winner for three decades after gun control became a national issue in the wake of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Even if polls suggest majority or plurality support for gun control, only gun owners vote in substantial numbers on the issue. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, gun control was viewed as a "third rail" issue, political death to anyone except urban Democrats with few gun-owning voters.
To back up this view, gun rights advocates could point to elections ranging from the 1970 defeat of Maryland Sen. Joseph D. Tydings to the 1994 vote against House Democrats, who had voted for the assault weapons ban.
Vice President Gore's presidential campaign is betting that the NRA is wrong and that the Democratic nominee will be able to portray Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the NRA as "anti-family" advocates of allowing people to carry concealed weapons in shopping centers, churches, sporting events and in their cars, and that the sheer numbers of guns in circulation makes them accessible to dangerous people.
The Gore strategy is based on the fact the politics of gun control shifted in 1996 and 1998. In a development that caused anxiety for top NRA officials, President Clinton paid no price in 1996 for his advocacy of new gun control laws, while GOP nominee Robert J. Dole and his pollsters saw gun rights as a loser and dropped the issue.
With growing numbers of reports of gun violence, a widely recognized tool in voter mobilization--fear--was available to Clinton and other gun control advocates. Conversely, gun rights advocates say their constituents felt secure and had little reason to vote.
"In '96 and '98, no one in our coalition felt threatened. We had a Republican House and Senate that stopped anything terribly onerous," said Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, just elected to the NRA board.
"This year," Norquist said, "the Democrats have done an incredibly stupid thing, reintroduced gun control. They look at the polls that say 65 percent of women are for gun control. The question is intensity versus preference.
"You can always get a certain percentage to say they are in favor of some gun controls. But, are you going to vote on your control position?"
At the annual convention here, NRA leaders were unrelenting in their portrayal of Gore--and the power of the next president to appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices--as threatening full-scale government confiscation of guns.
"They are coming after the guns," warned Kayne Robinson, the NRA's No. 2 top official. "Gun owners know that if Gore is elected, they will face the day of the long sad march to the government office. They will face the tearful line with their grandfather's priceless old relic cradled in their arms, forced to hand it over to a greedy, disrespectful bureaucrat."
There was, however, an implicit recognition by NRA leaders that the organization has become highly controversial and the target of Democrats: In their speeches at the NRA convention, none of the top officials mentioned Bush by name, preventing Gore from obtaining footage to use in commercials linking the GOP nominee to an organization Democrats openly acknowledge they intend to demonize and turn into a Republican liability by Nov. 7.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company