By Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Some politicians and media commentators understand the key to pro-gun political power, others never seem to figure it out, even when a former president explains it to them.
Former President Bill Clinton understands. He explained it in simple language for CNN’s Piers Morgan in late September, but apparently his message did not penetrate. Perhaps that’s why some people have come to refer to the CNN host as “Piers Moron..
As usual, CNN’s leading champion of gun bans used much of his interview with Clinton to push his anti-rights agenda. He wanted to know why Congress had failed to enact new gun laws after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, and why the gun prohibitionists keep losing.
When polls show Americans favor background checks and other gun control measures 70% to 30%, why does the pro-gun side win, as they did in the Colorado recall elections? That was the gist of Morgan’s question, asked almost as if Clinton should be able to unlock the door to new federal gun laws.
Clinton’s answer should explain a lot to Morgan, and maybe even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had helped bankroll the two anti-gun Colorado state senators who lost the recall.
First, Clinton reviewed what happened after he pushed the Brady Bill and the so-called assault weapons ban in his 1994 Crime Bill. He noted that both were close victories for the anti-gun side, but that both had cost him and his Democratic Party control of Congress in the 1994 congressional election that followed.
Clinton made it pretty clear that pro-gun activists and voters had intensity on their side.
In response to Morgan’s continued probing, Clinton used the Colorado recall elections to illustrate his point.
He said that the two senators lost in spite of the polling numbers, because pro-Second Amendment people were more committed to their beliefs. More of them turned out and voted.
Clinton explained that 100% of the “minority” (the 30% cited by Morgan) who opposed gun control voted to recall the senators while only 10% of those who said they supported the gun bans (Morgan’s 70%) turned out to vote. He also noted that while Coloradans are used to the convenience of voting by mail, in the Sept. 10 recall election, they actually had to visit a polling place.
The former president, no friend to the right to keep and bear arms but still a good political thinker, made it clear that the pro-gun side was more committed and was willing to work and vote for their beliefs.
When Morgan couldn’t seem to comprehend the lesson Clinton was providing, the politician from Arkansas went back to his roots for a micro-explanation.
Look, Clinton said, I come from Arkansas, where the people live a traditional lifestyle, hunting, fishing, going to church, relying on the goodwill of their neighbors.
I asked my uncle in Arkansas, why he wouldn’t agree to the government putting a few rules on some guns for the benefit of all people, like I did with the assault weapon ban, Clinton said. I told him we weren’t going to take away his shotgun.
Clinton said his uncle shook his head and said, “I just don’t trust you—or those other people in Washington..
Morgan still didn’t get the lesson.
“So how do we ever pass new gun legislation,” he asked Clinton.
“Only when all of the people across the country who say they support the new gun laws actually go to the polls like the pro-gunners do..
Clinton’s lesson for the obdurate Morgan, and the dwindling CNN show’s audience, helps explain a lot of things.
It explains why a powerful Capitol Hill figure, like former Democrat House Speaker Tom Foley, who died on Oct. 18, lost his seat in Congress in the historic 1994 elections. It explains why Sen.
Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat like Clinton—and Clinton’s uncle, voted against the background check bill this spring. It also explained why Colorado state Sen. Angela Giron lost her recall election in a predominately Democrat district on Sept. 10.
Morgan apparently didn’t learn anything from Clinton; he was back beating the anti-gun drum hysterically in an early October interview with Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
But Clinton’s lesson deserves some further thought.
To some extent, it was confirmed by a recent Pew Research poll that found pro-gunners were more committed to the gun rights issue than the anti-gunners.
Gun rights supporters donate four times more and are more politically involved than gun control advocates, according to a US News and World Report story on the Pew poll published in late July.
In May 2013, six months after the Newtown school shooting that sparked a national conversation on guns—and a month after the Senate failed to pass a major gun bill—Pew found that 25% of people who support gun rights had contributed money to a Second Amendment group, while just 6% of people who support gun control had donated on the issue.
Those numbers were roughly the same as what Pew found in January 2013, just a month after the Connecticut shooting.
The poll also found that gun rights activists are more politically involved, with 16% having contacted a public official to express their views, compared to 11% of gun control supporters.
Those who prioritize gun rights were also more likely not to vote for a candidate who has different gun views—41% of gun rights supporters said they wouldn’t—while fewer gun control supporters, or 31%, said a lawmaker’s gun policy would change the way they voted.
Gun control advocates were close to gun rights activists on one metric in the poll: signing petitions. Pew found that in the six months before the poll was taken, 10% of gun rights supporters signed a petition on gun policy, compared to 8% of supporters of gun control.
And people generally may be as suspicious of government as Bill Clinton’s uncle. An August AP-NORC Center poll found a growing number of Americans are questioning the government’s protection of the constitutional right to bear arms.
The poll was taken just after the Navy Yard shooting, and when asked how the government is doing on protecting a variety of rights and freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights and federal law, Americans pointed to slippage almost everywhere, but most dramatically on guns and voting rights.
Pro-gunners should take Clinton’s lesson to heart. Even he says they are doing a better job of supporting their cause, contacting representatives, raising funds and—above all—turning out to vote.
Morgon Clinton gun discussion starts at 28:30:
