In July 2001, at a meeting in Indianapolis, national Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe told party brethren that gun control was an issue they were wise to avoid. Nobody in the ballroom challenged him. The consensus at the time was that Democrats had lost the House seven years earlier, when Newt Gingrich’s GOP picked up 54 seats, because President Bill Clinton had signed a ban on the sale of assault weapons. And in 2001, many Democrats believed that Al Gore had lost the recent presidential race because southern white males had tagged him as a gun controller.[...]
Largely overlooked during the government stasis in Washington is the news that House Democrats celebrated their return to power by touting legislation to expand background checks that would cover most firearm purchases—even those made at gun shows and online. The chief sponsor, Representative Mike Thompson of California, was once a recipient of NRA money and a B+ rating from the NRA. But now he’s hailing the gun-reform bill as “a decisive step to help save lives,” with strong support “from public polling to the ballot box.” [...]
The political winds have decisively shifted. According to the exit polls released last November, 59 percent of the voters in the congressional elections favored “stricter gun-control measures,” with only 37 percent in opposition. Of those who supported more gun control, 76 percent voted for House Democratic candidates. The NRA nevertheless insisted in a postelection statement that “gun control was not a decisive factor on election day,” but it appears that the ever-mounting national casualties—from Sandy Hook to Parkland to the Pittsburgh synagogue, with 116,000 shooting victims annually, 35,000 deaths annually, and historically high gun violence in schools—have undercut the NRA’s power and its purist defense of the Second Amendment. [...]
Granted, new House Democratic calls for an assault-weapons ban, stronger background checks, and a lifting of the 23-year ban on federal firearms research will likely die in the Republican Senate. But Democrats—buoyed by their historic gains in suburban House districts, particularly among independents and Republican-leaning women—believe that gun-reform policy is good politics, with the goal of rebuilding the party’s brand for 2020.
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