americanhunter.org ❘ 19 ❘ august 2019
By NRA-ILA Staff
I
n a December 2000 interview
with CBS’s Dan Rather, President
Bill Clinton, fresh off Al Gore’s
defeat in the presidential election,
acknowledged, “I don’t think there’s
any doubt that, in at least five states
I can think of, the NRA had a decisive
influence ... .” In his 2004 biography,
Clinton would again recall the role
Gore’s extreme gun-control positions
played in the 2000 race, noting that
NRA “hurt Al badly” in Tennessee
and “several other states.” Still
smarting from the decade-old defeat
in 2013, Clinton warned Democrats
on gun control, stating, “Do not
patronize the passionate supporters
of your opponents by looking down
your nose at them .... A lot of these
people live in a world very different
from the world lived in by the people
proposing these things.”
Gun-rights supporters opposed Gore
for good reason. Gore had served as
vice president in an administration thathad enacted a five-day waiting period on
handgun sales with the Brady Handgun
Violence Protection Act and banned
commonly owned semi-automatic
firearms and magazines under the
1994 Clinton crime bill. Moreover, Gore
campaigned in 2000 on federal handgun-
owner licensing. The 2000 Democratic
Platform reiterated this position. The
platform read, “We should require a
photo license I.D., a full background
check, and a gun safety test to buy a
new handgun in America.”
After Gore’s defeat, it wasn’t until
the 2016 presidential campaign that
American gun owners were again
subjected to such overt hostility from
one of the major party’s candidates.
Ignoring the sage advice of her husband,
Hillary Clinton campaigned on a raft of
gun-control policies and expressed her
opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s
opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller,
which held that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep andbear arms. Thanks in no small part to the
efforts of NRA members, Clinton would
lose in what Politico called the “biggest
upset in U.S. history.”
The evidence suggests that
a significant portion of the 2020
Democratic presidential candidates
are similarly obstinate. With a crowded
field (23 candidates at press time),
many of the hopefuls are engaged in an
embarrassing race for left-wing votes,
attention from the anti-gun legacy press
and Michael Bloomberg’s favor. In this
ugly race, each candidate gains ground
by embracing gun-control policies and
anti-gun rhetoric more shocking than
their competitors.
The starting point for the 2020
Democratic candidates is a ban on
commonly owned semi-automatic
firearms and magazines. Apparently, the
multiple U.S. Department of Justice-
funded studies showing that the 1994
“assault-weapons” ban did not produce
a measurable reduction in violent crime
are not enough to put the field off
this ineffective policy. At press time,
the top 10 candidates (according to
the RealClear Politics polling average)
consist of former Vice President Joe
Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala
Harris (D-Calif.), South Bend, Ill. Mayor
Pete Buttigieg, failed U.S. Senate
candidate Robert (“Beto”) O’Rourke,
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), New York
City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Sen. Amy
Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and businessman
Andrew Yang. All 10 have expressedThe Race to the
Bottom on Our
FIREARMS
FREEDOM