Cars, Trucks, and Guns: A way for Democrats to reconnect with rural America

You can kill more people with a truck than with a gun.  

This isn't advice to terrorists.  It is an observation for Democratic candidates.  You do not need to be a martyr for the cause of gun control.

An indication that the Democratic party has become a party of coastal elites and college towns is their attitude toward gun control.   Democratic national leaders favor it, and indeed favoring new restrictions on guns is apparently a requirement.  Bernie Sanders got scolded by Hillary Clinton for not being sufficiently anti-gun, and Sanders immediately attempted to assure Democrats that he was not a Democratic gun heretic with independent thought, and  that he, too, supported gun registration efforts.

There is a cultural mismatch between urban and rural people as relates to guns. 

Opposed by Republicans and rural legislators

Many rural people see guns as a device they are comfortable with, useful for recreational hunting, essentially as innocuous as a fishing rod or skis.    Guns figure as a positive symbol of independence, self-reliance, and freedom, but also as a chip on the shoulder: woe to any politician who dares take this away from me.  It is a litmus test.

The NRA has been extraordinarily effective in mobilizing their base of support.  It is an overlapping group of rural people and Republicans  Local Republican legislators, House member Sal Esquivel and Senator Alan DeBoer both voted, in a near party line vote, a bill that would allow police officers to file with a judge an Emergency Risk Protection Order to stop someone from acquiring a firearm.  The lineup of votes in Oregon tells a story:  with few exceptions, legislators from the Portland-to-Eugene population center voted in favor of the bill; rural legislators voted against it.  See how they voted:   Click Here

NRA Call to Action urging members to stop the Emergency Risk Protection bill.

Democrats nationally have an idea imbedded in the back of their minds, voiced most emotionally by President Obama after the Sandy Hook killing of school children: mentally ill people and people with terrorist intent get guns and do mass murder, and we need to stop them from acquiring the tool to kill so efficiently.  

Gun advocates have a different idea in mind.  It is that guns are everywhere already, that anyone can get a gun if they want one, and that more good people ought to have guns to combat bad people with guns.  And besides, gun ownership is a right to be preserved, period, and that tyrants want to take that from you.

Can a Democrat hope to win in a red state or red district?  Yes.  By recognizing that guns aren't the problem.  Really.  People are the problem.

No special license.  $39.95/day.  Available anytime.

He or she needs to recognize and voice two simple realities.   One is that America is awash with guns and that guns are about as easy to acquire as marijuana.  Whether legal or illegal, anyone who wanted to get marijuana could get it, both a few years ago in Oregon, when it was illegal, and now when it is legal.  Monitoring and registering gun ownership has approximately the same chance of success as prohibiting marijuana access.  If one doesn't like the war on drugs, why would one think the war on guns would be any different?   

Barricades 

The second is the reality that guns are actually a slow way to do murder.  Cars and trucks are a far more effective.  One need not be "soft" on terrorism to say that guns are not the problem.   Guns don't kill people.  People kill people.  

 A person eager to make a statement can pick his crowd.  Want a statement about Planned Parenthood, pick a Planned Parenthood outdoor gathering.  Want to target Christians, simply pick the church and be ready on Sunday when services end and people gather.  

The victims make it easy.  They gather, they announce their event in advance, they gather in places convenient to get to, and depending on the vehicle and the advance planning one can have the hope of jumping out, joining into the wild crowd, and escaping alive to do it again.  

Truck as a murder weapon.

Police and public works departments are aware of the problem.  Barricades are becoming more frequent in front of some public buildings, especially airports, but progress is slow and public buildings are only one target and not a particularly good one.  Sporting events, concerts, political rallies, parades, civic events are much more deadly.

Here is the political opportunity for a Democrat.  One can simply accept that guns are a reality, rather like marijuana or alcohol.  Prohibition doesn't work.  People liked their alcohol, they like their marijuana, and they like their guns.   It is America.  Take Americans as we are.

 And second, the Democrat can observe and fully acknowledge with empathy the tragedy of a Sandy Hook or an Aurora or an Orlando or a San Bernadino (four cities famous as the site of mass murder by gun) and observe that the problem is not the weapon, it is the behavior.   

Note:  I am not pro gun.   I don't particularly care about guns.  I don't own one.  But I recognize that other people care very much about them.   I analogize them to my own feelings about alcohol and marijuana.  I don't consume either one, but I recognize that some people enjoy them and the effort to ban them has consequences far worse than letting people alone and enduring the consequences of freedom.

A Democrat who takes a libertarian position can be a viable candidate in a red state or red congressional district.   One who adopts the position of the national party will face the opposition of the voters, just as they would if they attempted to re-institute prohibition.