Four years after adopting a platform demanding a government crackdown on guns, Democratic presidential candidates this year are back peddling from a decade of party support for federal regulation of firearms. John Kerry, frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, repeatedly notes in his speeches that he is a hunter, and Wesley Clark says that he has "20-some odd guns in the house." Howard Dean suggests gun laws should be left to states to decide, and Joseph Lieberman has repudiated a 2000 campaign pledge by his running mate Al Gore to license anyone buying a gun. These views represent a shift...
