Posted on 09/28/2003 1:05:55 PM PDT by JimVT
Dean walks the line on firearms
By Sam Hemingway Free Press Staff Writer
Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean has a ready answer for voters who think his opposition to the Iraq war and support for homosexual rights make him an ultra-liberal.
"I've been endorsed by the National Rifle Association," Dean tells audiences at almost every stop, referring to NRA's support of him when he was Vermont's governor for 11 years.
That statement is true, but an examination of Dean's record on gun issues in Vermont suggests his relationship with the NRA in his home state has been more platonic than passionate.
When issues of concern to the NRA came up in Vermont -- how to perform background checks on gun purchases and whether to ban guns on school grounds -- Dean took positions amenable to the NRA but did so without fanfare.
"He was not really someone who came out strong for gun owners," said state Rep. Robert Helm, R-Castleton, chairman the House Fish and Wildlife Committee during part of Dean's gubernatorial tenure. "He just let the gun people take care of their own issues."
As for the NRA, state campaign finance records show that the NRA never followed up its endorsement of Dean with a donation to any of his five re-election campaigns.
From the NRA's perspective, gun control isn't a hot-button issue in Vermont, a state where hunters are numerous but violent crime is scarce, at least by national standards.
Plus, Vermont's relaxed gun laws -- a person can carry a loaded, concealed weapon through downtown Burlington without a permit -- were already in place in Vermont before Dean became governor. Rural vs. urban
Dean's laid-back approach won't work if he becomes president.
Federal gun legislation is perennially contentious. There is ongoing debate in Congress over how to close the so-called gun-show loophole on background checks and whether the gun industry should be declared immune from lawsuits filed by gun violence victims.
On the stump, Dean has voiced his support for the Brady bill requiring background checks for gun purchases and the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban. He adds that no more federal gun-control laws are needed.
"I'm from a rural state and I understand that the gun issue in rural states is different than the gun issue in urban states," Dean said in Iowa in July. "My attitude is let California and New York have as much gun control as they want, but just don't make a law that applies equally to Vermont and Wyoming and Montana."
Dean does oppose the legislation that would make the gun industry immune from victims' lawsuits, according to Ron Weich, a senior policy analyst for the Dean campaign.
NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre said it's mixed messages like that that make him uneasy about Dean. He acknowledged Dean seems more in line with NRA policy than, say U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and John Kerry, D-Mass.
"It looks to me like he's trying to walk it right down the middle," he said of Dean. "He's trying to give everybody something. It's why I say he's sort of schizophrenic on gun issues."
Vermont record
Dean's unwillingness to push gun-control measures as governor was based on two factors -- the state's low crime rate and a respect for the state's gun lobby.
In the last five years of Dean's tenure, Vermont had just 53 homicides and guns were involved in less than half of them. Nationally, guns are involved in two-thirds of all homicides. Dean got a lesson in the power of the NRA the year before he became governor. Then-U.S. Rep. Peter Smith, R-Vt., a one-term House member, lost his seat in 1990 after the NRA waged a vigorous campaign to defeat him. Smith had switched positions on a gun-control bill before Congress.
When he became governor, Dean signaled to gun owners that his policy on guns would aim at punishing the person who committed a crime rather than the weapon used to commit it.
"It was an excellent approach," said Evan Hughes of Barre, an officer with the Vermont Federation of Sportsman's Clubs and an NRA member. "We were very pleased with that position."
After Columbine
While Dean backed various get-tough-on-crime bills in the Legislature, he took a hands-off position on most gun bills. During his 11 years in office, only three of 29 gun-related bills became law.
The one time Dean did get involved with gun legislation came in 2000. In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, the Legislature was considering a bill to make it a crime to have a gun on school grounds, no matter what the reason.
The wording was eventually changed so that gun possession in such instances was only a crime if the gun was discovered inside the school or on a school bus, or the person was carrying it on school grounds with the intent of harming another person.
"Howard helped make that happen," said former state Sen. Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, the Senate majority leader at the time.
Shumlin said Dean and he worked out the language change together, at the urging of NRA lobbyists.
Helm said his recollection of the revision was slightly different. "Howard was forced to take a position on that," Helm said.
"He just does that stuff to get votes," said David Pidgeon of Pidgeon's Gun Shop in New Haven. "He's not really trustworthy."
Former state Rep. Henry Holmes, R-Bethel, gave Dean credit for actively supporting his plan to establish a youth hunting day, and later a youth hunting weekend in Vermont. Holmes is president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsman's Clubs, the NRA's state affiliate.
Dean's support for that measure earned him a visit from the NRA gun-education mascot, Eddie Eagle.
Dean's NRA support paid him other dividends. When he was under fire from some sportsmen for supporting plans for an ecological reserve on newly acquired state lands in the Northeast Kingdom, the so-called Champion land deal, the NRA made it known it supported the measure.
"If it was just on gun issues only, I'd probably vote for Howard Dean for president," said Holmes, a conservative Republican.
The national stage
The Dean campaign's strategy of promoting his NRA credentials has its risks. Democrats are traditionally gun-control advocates, and his NRA support may cause some party-line voters to abandon him and support another candidate.
"The liberal elite in the Democratic Party almost demands that Democratic candidates recite the gun-control mantra," LaPierre said.
The upside of having had NRA support in the past is that it demonstrates Dean isn't a slave to a single ideology. The NRA has 4.2 million members and is not shy about advising gun owners on how to vote when it counts. It has made no endorsement in the 2004 presidential race.
"If Al Gore had my position on guns, I wouldn't be here and he'd be in the White House," Dean said in an interview earlier this year.
LaPierre agreed, saying Gore's gun-control stance in the 2000 cost him presidency by causing him to lose Arkansas, West Virginia and his home state of Tennessee.
Many of those deciding votes belonged to people who were also union members, a constituency Dean is trying desperately to reach. LaPierre said Dean was smart to understand the connection.
"It's been proven again and again and again that union members will vote against a candidate who is anti-Second Amendment," LaPierre said.
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
He described Dean's return to NYC after a quick jaunt around the country as "triumphal"!!!!!!! No bias there, ey?
Check out the Free Press web site above and note that they have a huge number of pro-Dean stories archived and a number of pro-Dean web sites BUT NOT ONE that offers another slant on the Little Corporal.
It'll be interesting to see how Bush and Dean compare on 2nd Amendment issues if Dean becomes the nominee. My guess is Bush has disappointed those in Tennessee, West Virginia and Arkansas who voted for him who'd hoped for a more aggressively pro-gun President. I'd hope the campaign, assuming Dean becomes the nominee, would force both Bush and Dean to make some clear and firm commitments to 2nd Amendment supporters.
I do believe that Dean is correct on this point. If Al Gore had not turned on gun owners, he would have won his home state, and probably a couple of other states as well. I do believe the Democrats have finally seen the light on this issue, they don't talk about gun control too much nowadays.
Which is, as it should be.
It would be a mistake to focus on this too much, I think, though. The 2000 election was so close, particularly but not only in Florida, that you could probably fill a page with "if onlys".
Bush, to the best of my knowledge, has not changed his position on the gun issue from the 2000 campaign. The only thing that could conceivably hurt Bush, imho, would be if the AW Ban actually reaches his desk, and that seems unlikely; I expect it to remain bottled up in committee in the House until it passes its expiration date.
Pierre the Poodle is lying again. It wasn't Gore's position on gun control that cost him his support in his supposed home state, his supposed home county, and his own voting precinct, though it certainly didn't help him any.
But what nailed him struck much closer to home, and it's also the reason he now can't find financial backers in Tennessee willing to support his attempts at another try. He's toast.
-archy-/-
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