Supreme Court Rules For Individual Gun Rights
This entry was posted on 6/26/2008 9:52 AM and is filed under 2008 Election,All Posts.
In a 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court did Barack Obama a favor by taking one of the GOP's ugliest wedge issues off the table for this election:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
Whatever your feelings about the merits of the ruling, or on the 2nd Amendment in general, it is undeniable that the battle over gun ownership rights in this country has been a loser for the Democratic Party. When our electoral chances are dependent on gun-loving states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan staying in our column in November, allowing ourselves to be outflanked year after year on the gun issue is a non-starter.
It's completely fair and necessary to bring up the hideous amount of gun deaths that occur in America each year. It's fair and necessary to suggest that these deaths could possibly have been avoided by greater gun regulation. Just yesterday in my home state of Kentucky, a plastics plant employee went on a rampage at work, killing 5 co-workers and himself with a handgun he retrieved on his lunch break.
I also think it's fair and necessary, however, to consider how much the fight over gun regulation in this country has cost the progressive movement. It's certainly a good bet that had the Democratic Party not become synonymous with gun control by the end of the 1990's, George W. Bush would not have been able to win Ohio in 2000, thus losing the electoral college to Al Gore regardless of the shenanigans in Florida.
I think if you're going to tally up the bloodshed caused by gun deaths in America, you also have to consider the amount of deaths caused here by a lack of universal health care. And you have to consider all those blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan who, but for the love of their guns and fear of liberals who will take them away, would be voting down-the-line Democrat election after election.
We could already have universal health care in place by now. Instead, the progressive movement has spent much of its political energy the last couple decades lecturing law-abiding gun owners about the blood on their hands. Whether that criticism was fair or not, I think it's indisputable that there were better ways to seek progressive change for the greater benefit of us all.
Regardless, today's decision on the 2nd amendment was a boon to the Democratic Party. Much the way Bush was able to point to Roe vs. Wade as "settled law" when accused of threatening to overturn abortion rights back in 2000, Obama can point to D.C. vs. Heller as having "settled" the debate over the 2nd Amendment the next time McCain demagogues him on guns.
