Matters of Church and State

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

        

Yesterday’s gun control vote frustrates me, but maybe not for the same reasons it does some. I, too, wanted the measures to pass, but the sole cited reason for its failure – Senators caving under the pressure of the NRA – is a simplistic explanation. Not wrong, really, but avoiding the lesson that will have to be learned to succeed the next time.

         

The President staked meaningful measures for gun control on the outpouring of emotion in reaction to Newtown. The President and leading Democrats gambled that they had the moral authority and political power to seize the moment.  The polls and the American people were with them. They failed to utilize the political finesse inside the walls of Congress success on this issue will require.  Obama, Reid and others bet on this power, and they miscalculated.

         

Here’s what I see as the crux of the issue: President Obama offered no real cover to those Republicans who might have crossed the aisle to vote with him. He has continued to make this a binary argument: join me, or be with the NRA. By blaming the NRA, they fuel its success. Obama has not built a third-way, big tent approach that I think is very possible to create.

         

Make no mistake, the NRA is not the only opposition. They are the far-forward noisy edge. And, of course they have money and influence. But the President, who had so much going in his favor, has a credibility problem on this issue. President Obama laid the groundwork for this failure in his “clinging to guns and God” comments. Photos of him shooting skeet at Camp David were reminiscent of Dukakis in the tank. He revealed a kind of outsider’s scorn for gun culture in America. He equated that culture more recently with the events in Newtown.

         

That was a political mistake. People don’t really trust President Obama on this issue. And he overreached.

        

It’s going to take someone who understands gun-owning Americans to succeed.  I think meaningful legislation will come from a leader who believes the following:

         1. It’s not Gun Control. The art here is to de-tooth the slippery-         slope argument made by the NRA, and to build a more broad-based coalition of reasonable argument. The slippery-slope argument is that the government will create gun laws for the common good and then move toward taking away guns. Start by coming up with new words. Ask someone if they support gun          control, and get narrow support, ask someone if they support background checks, and the support is much bigger.

         2. Don’t try to exploit a tragedy. Actually, understand how to          exploit a tragedy. It’s a crime and public safety issue. Everyone hated Newtown. Yelling at your neighbor about guns to soothe pain doesn’t solve it. It will take an argument something along these lines: we don’t want to take away your guns. We want to make it less likely that guns end up in the commission of a crime, and less likely to be discharged in accidents.

         3. Know of what you speak. If you think the answer is eliminating high-capacity magazines or certain kind of weapons, then know what you are talking about. Automatic and semi-automatic are the “actions” used by a weapon to operate, sort of like standard and automatic transmissions are used by automobiles to operate. Most of my friends think anything with a          banana clip and that is black is an “automatic weapon.” Why is this important?  Like it or not, Americans know a lot about guns, just not the Americans who want to get rid of them.

         4. Make sure you don’t actually want to take away guns.  Some          people do. They see the answer as taking back guns, and eliminating the Second Amendment. European countries take this approach. It’s fine if that’s what you believe. But if you want to create successful legislation in this country, don’t make common cause with those people. They are less representative of the country at large than the lunatic fringe of gun ownership.

         5. Criminals do kill people, not just guns. This should be a crime          and public safety issue, not another part of the cultural war. Build on that idea, not what you don’t understand about why people would “want” to own a certain kind of weapon, or whether or not they “need” to own one. Some people like to go out into the desert and blast away at inanimate objects. They have that right.

I don’t think President Obama and Senators Reid and Feinstein are the right lawmakers to solve this problem. I think they are the perfect lawmakers to help the NRA raise money to defeat commonsense solutions. I want success, not just rhetoric. That's possible with the right kind of leadership.

John Lavey