From Don B. Kates Jr.at the Independent Institute

Are this year’s U.S. presidential candidates avoiding the gun issue?

Last week, San Francisco’s First District Court of Appeal struck down that city’s two-year-old law that confiscated all handguns and rendered all other guns useless by banning ammunition sales. And on March 9 of last year, a federal court of appeals invalidated District of Columbia laws that banned handguns and precluded keeping any gun for defense in the home. That case is now in the Supreme Court, which many expect will hold that such laws violate the Constitution’s guarantee that law-abiding, responsible adults may have guns to defend their homes and families.

Ironically, though these laws represent the ultimate goals of the gun “control” (actually gun ban) movement, they epitomize that movement’s political downfall. For Democratic candidates, an Eleventh Commandment has evolved: “Don’t mention guns”—while formerly anti-gun Republicans Romney and Giuliani now declare themselves faithful advocates of gun rights.

Democratic politicians are well aware that (as Bill Clinton himself says) Congressional Democrats’ anti-gun efforts caused the 1994 voter revolt which—for the first time in 50 years—gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Democrats regained Congress in 2006 because of the unpopularity of the Iraq war. But generally the Democratic victors either said nothing about guns or openly declared their support for gun rights.

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Posted by JohnKonop on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 1:57 am | under Uncategorized | |RSS 2.0 feed | Comments and pings closed. |