"In key contests, Democrats championing gun rights; Candidates gain favor with NRA" by Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | July 14, 2010
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Democratic candidates in key states are embracing gun owners’ rights, winning favor from the National Rifle Association, a lobby that has long been the target of disdain from the party faithful.
In New Hampshire, Representative Paul Hodes, a Democratic Senate candidate, has an “A minus’’ NRA rating, potentially insulating him from progun rights attacks in a state that’s big on hunting and personal liberties.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in a bruising campaign for reelection in Nevada, has conservative activists buzzing because the NRA is considering endorsing his reelection.
Indiana’s Democratic Senate candidate Brad Ellsworth, who has an “A’’ rating from the NRA, may get the group’s endorsement this fall over GOP candidate Dan Coats, whom the NRA criticized in mailings to Hoosiers as being weak on gun rights.
And in Kentucky, Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway has not only heralded gun rights but also signed friend-of-the court briefs supporting gun owners before two landmark Supreme Court rulings backing their rights in District of Columbia and Chicago cases.
Let's see, if I lived in Kentucky and was voting I would ask if there is a third party; however, barring that it is a Republican seat with Rand Paul running as the nominee, right?
Send Conway, let the chips fall where they may, and give the pukes not up for reelection a huge message that they are next if they do not start DOING WHAT WE WANT!
“I think there’s been a change in the country as a whole,’’ said Jon Delano, an independent political analyst associated with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Unless you’re from an urban area, where gun violence is so intense that there’s a feeling you need to control these weapons, the vast majority across the country do not support gun control.’’
That goes a long way towards explaining the pro-gun control Boston Globe.
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The Obama administration, much to the disappointment of gun control advocates, has made no moves toward proposing restrictions on firearms.
That seems to be the case across the whole populace, doesn't it?
For one reason or another the "Hope and Change" president has disappointed us all.
President Obama signed a law that included allowing people to bring guns onto national parks. Despite Obama’s behavior and the court victories, voters in critical electoral battlegrounds remained worried about their Second Amendment rights, and candidates scrambled to reassure them.
Because of the cold, dead hand remark?
“I represent people in a state that has a very long and proud tradition of responsible gun ownership. I also believe the Constitution means what it says — it’s important to protect fundamental and individual liberties, whether it’s the right of a gun owner or the right of a woman to choose,’’ said New Hampshire’s Hodes, a gun owner who is trying to seize one of the few GOP seats up for grabs this fall, that of retiring Senator Judd Gregg.
Actually, that last one isn't in there; however, when is the Congress going to sit down and read that thing?
All four of the major Republican contenders vying to face Hodes in November are vocal gun rights supporters, keeping with the GOP platform. In interviews, former state attorney general Kelly Ayotte, attorney Ovide Lamontagne, and businessmen Bill Binnie and Jim Bender all ardently affirmed their commitments to gun rights and said Granite State residents wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ayotte has drawn some criticism from gun owners because of her opposition to a state bill that would have dramatically expanded the “castle doctrine’’ to allow people to protect themselves with guns in public places. Ayotte said law enforcement officials — whose support she enjoys in the primary — believed the measure threatened public safety. She said, however, “I am a very strong Second Amendment supporter.’’
She's a cop!
“It speaks to liberty,’’ Binnie said, affirming his progun stance. Lamontagne said “the Second Amendment is a tenet of my candidacy’’ and expressed skepticism that Hodes would attract progun voters.
While Republicans still tend to capture more endorsements and campaign contributions from the NRA, Democrats have made inroads. In 2002, Democrats took just 11 percent of the contributions the NRA made to candidates in federal campaigns; this election cycle, they’ve received 28 percent, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
When you buy both sides you usually get what you want.
Wall Street, Israel, and the war contractors always do.
Conservatives across the country see gun ownership as a concrete example of the balance of power between government and the individual, activists say.
I will say this: It is a hell of a lot harder to suppress or repress a people when they are armed. Take a trip to Afghanistan if you don't believe me.
Unhappy with what they call a “government takeover’’ of health care and big businesses, gun owners see the Second Amendment as the final frontier of individual freedom, they say.
I mean, when you think about it, it is.
It is the LAST THING YOU HAVE when they COME FOR YOU -- and the ONLY THING that may PREVENT THAT, America!!!!!
Yeah, I'm SORRY that the "gun nuts" turned out to be your DEFENDERS!!
Again, Afghanistan, Taliban.... sigh.
“I’ve never seen the degree of genuine concern, and in some cases, anger, either rational or irrational, toward government,’’ said Ralph Demicco, the owner of Riley’s gun store in Hooksett, N.H. “People feel left out of the equation. They feel isolated.’’
You know, like the USraeli empire these days.
The Empire's paper won't tell you that, but...
The Sept. 11 attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster made gun owners more nervous about the ability of law enforcement agencies to protect them, Demicco said.
And NOT ONLY THAT, the INCREASING TYRANNY surrounding SPYING and subsequent MILITARISM that developed!!!
The recession has upped that anxiety, he said, since budget cuts have forced municipalities to lay off police officers.
Again, the first line of defense.... crime rates are lower in pro-gun states.
It's a cliche the MSM hates; however, it is the truth: outlaw guns and only the outlaws will have guns (including a government that thinks it is above the law).
Obama has largely avoided the volatile gun issue since his campaign-era controversy, when, during a private fund-raiser, he said some voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.’’
But HE isn't PREJUDICED or anything.
Obama supports reauthorizing the ban on assault weapons, but has not made a push to do so, with the White House arguing the best short-term solution is to enforce the laws on the books.
Unless it's illegal immigration, then the best thing to do is ignore it and sue some states that have been forced to take matters into their own hands.
Peter Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he is very frustrated with the behavior of many Democrats for either toeing the NRA line or remaining silent. “Part of it goes back to this myth that the Democrats lost Congress in ’94 because of guns,’’ said Helmke, a former GOP mayor and onetime Republican nominee for the Senate in Indiana. “It was maybe a few races. If it was an issue, how did Bill Clinton get reelected in ’96?’’ Helmke said of the president who signed the assault weapons ban.
My frustration with them all?
The absurd acceptance and idiotic ignorance regarding 9/11.
But Democrats got scared, he said, and have increasingly sought to mollify gun owners.
Yeah, and the whole JFK experience sort of showed them what will happen if you head in a certain direction. I didn't mean for it to come out that way, it just did.
Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA spokesman, said the Democrats were merely reflecting what he called “mainstream America. I think what you’re seeing is a realization that it’s bad politics to be on the wrong side of the gun issue,’’ Arulanandam said.
And that makes you DANGEROUS to the GOVERNMENT and the INTERESTS behind it, 'murkn!!!!
The Democratic Party in recent years has eased its rhetoric on gun control, and the party picked up House seats in Western and rural areas in part because it recruited progun candidates more suited to their constituencies....
Yeah, DOING WHAT VOTERS want is a SURPRISING WAY to WIN ELECTIONS, huh?
I guess that's why the MSM is trying to make the coming election about race and immigration, huh?
ANY WEDGE WILL DO in AmeriKan politics!
--more--"
Got you in their sights, do they?
