Politics and the AWB
Alex Halperin, of The Financial Times, writes:
On paper, both John Kerry and George W.Bush support the extension of the US assault weapons ban. In practice, neither has done much to make it happen – thanks to the power of gun politics in the US.
The 10-year-old ban expires on September 13, highlighting an issue both men have avoided.
In 1994 Mr Kerry backed the law prohibiting sales of various types of semi-automatic weapons. But, like all Democrats, he and his aides know the price of tangling with the gun lobby. Former president Bill Clinton has said that the assault weapons ban cost 20 Democratic members of Congress their jobs and helped the Republicans sweep Capitol Hill in 1994.
The National Rifle Association, for its part, boasts that it mobilised gun owners in such key states as Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri, rallying enough votes for Mr Bush to win in 2000.
So Mr Kerry has hardly mentioned extending the ban even though the Democrats’ election year platform calls for it. In a symbolic Senate vote to extend the ban this year, Mr Kerry voted in favour, but since then he has courted gun owners by posing for photographs with a shotgun and in hunting gear.
That being said, I used to think that it was brilliant politics on the part of Clinton to have the foresight to ensure the ban expired in an election year. However, it seems those politics may be its undoing.
