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Let Freedom Ring,
Posted on 09/14/2004 7:30:19 AM PDT by Born Conservative
John Kerry's flip-flopping on the Iraq war is well known. His statements on hotly contested social issues have also been all over the place. (Kerry says that that life starts at conception, but he votes consistently in favor of abortion.) On guns, the senator's position is even more confusing.
Last Tuesday Kerry's campaign claimed: "John Kerry's opponents are worried because he's the first Democratic candidate to support Second Amendment gun rights and to be an avid hunter.... The Republican Party and George Bush's campaign will stop at nothing to mislead voters about John Kerry's record." Campaigning in St. Louis last Thursday, Kerry again claimed, "I support the Second Amendment. I've been a hunter all my life." Earlier this year, Kerry said, "I believe that the Constitution, our laws and our customs protect law-abiding American citizens' right to own firearms." If you believe some of the responses from voters, Kerry's statements and his constant photo-ops with guns have convinced many that he supports gun rights.
Yet, according to those on both sides of the gun debate — the Brady Campaign and the NRA — Kerry has voted for every gun-control bill before the Senate over the last 18 years. He has consistently voted for restrictions, from banning semi-automatic guns to mandating storage rules. He refused to rein in the lawsuits against gun-makers.
Kerry has also voted to ban hunting on federal land and to ban most center-fire rifle ammunition, including the rounds most commonly used by hunters (positions that please the animal-rights groups, with whom he also has a perfect voting record of support).
Kerry has hesitated little in claiming to be everyone's friend. This year Kerry told outdoor writers about his commitment to hunters and that "I do a better job of fighting for the rights of sportsmen than George Bush does." Addressing the Humane Society, he bragged that "I've had my name on every piece of animal-rights legislation ever passed by Congress!"
Of course, Kerry's claims about being "the first Democratic candidate to support Second Amendment gun rights and to be an avid hunter" are nonsense. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton all have hunted. Clinton went hunting frequently while he was governor and John Kennedy hunted deer at least once. Johnson was famous for bringing politicians to his ranch and demanding that they go hunting as a test of their manhood. Carter was a genuinely avid hunter and tracked everything from possum to deer to duck; he starting hunting with his dad as a young child. Both Kennedy and Johnson were NRA members.
Possibly the Kerry campaign meant that he was the only Democratic candidate this year who supported the Second Amendment. But what was most striking this year was that all the Democratic presidential candidates had extremely uniform views on guns. In essentially the same language, all said they supported the Second Amendment as protecting the right of individuals to own guns, subject to "reasonable restrictions."
It is not surprising that last year Democratic pollster Mark Penn produced surveys showing that if Democrats didn't show "respect for the 2nd Amendment and support gun safety," voters would presume that they were anti-gun. "The formula for Democrats," according to Penn, "is to say that they support the 2nd Amendment, but that they want tough laws that close loopholes. This is something [Democrats] can run on and win on." It hasn't been lost on Kerry and other Democrats that Bill Clinton and Democratic strategists believe that Al Gore's strong stand for gun control probably cost him states such as Tennessee — and thus the 2000 presidential election.
But even if this sudden conversion by Democrats was actually heartfelt, where is the line drawn on reasonable restrictions? What does it mean to the Democrats that the Second Amendment is an individual right? During January this year, the policy gurus for the five leading Democratic presidential campaigns pitched their candidates at an American Enterprise Institute breakfast in Washington. Given their candidates' stated support for the right of individuals to own guns, I asked where the candidates stood on, say, the bans on handgun ownership in Chicago and the District of Columbia?
Only Joe Lieberman's representative answered the question. Lieberman "would oppose an outright ban on handguns, and he is not afraid to say so." He challenged the other Democrats to join him. But Kerry's representative, as well as those for Dean, Edwards, and Clark, all refused to respond.
Polling may have convinced Kerry to change his rhetoric, but his voting record and his refusal to "oppose an outright ban on handguns" show his constant endorsements of the Second Amendment mean little.
— John R. Lott, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns.
Kerry - I was for the gun ban before I was against it and than when I was given a gun in WV I was for it in front of the crowd and then I had second thoughts and so I was aginst it, Now its time for my president to do something about it or maybe not who knows I don't really care about the second ammendment anyway because I am really not for the constitution maybe depends on who you talk to about it, I think a constitution could be good and if I were president we may or may not have one you see it just depends...
GET A GRIP..
Sorry...
Any time a firearms-related thread is created on FreeRepublic, please be sure to add the "banglist" keyword to it so that interested FReepers don't miss it.
Let Freedom Ring,
Ping
Can't you here him say, "That is not a flip-flop"!!!! LOL
Kerry has also voted to ban hunting on federal land and to ban most center-fire rifle ammunition,including the rounds most commonly used by hunters (positions that please the animal-rights groups, with whom he also has a perfect voting record of support).
Kerry has hesitated little in claiming to be everyone's friend. This year Kerry told outdoor writers about his commitment to hunters and that "I do a better job of fighting for the rights of sportsmen than George Bush does." Addressing the Humane Society, he bragged that "I've had my name on every piece of animal-rights legislation ever passed by Congress!"
Jesus told us that by 'their fruits' you will know them...no one is a bigger 'fruit cake' than John F Kerry...(the 'F' in Kerry stands for 'Fruitcake')
Kerry, Feinstein, Schumer have boldly stated that their ultimate goal is to rid America of all firearms..
KERRY'S VOTING RECORD IS PROOF OF WHAT AND WHO HE REALLY IS....FORGET HIS LYING WORDS LOOK AT HIS WORKS....
A well-regulated population being necessary to the security of a Democratic administration, the right of the people to hunt, with certain approved sporting weapons, and only in approved sporting locations during approved sporting seasons, with appropriate license and fees, shall not be infringed, until we decide otherwise. -John F'n Kerry
Kerry is no more for gun rights than Putin is for individual freedoms.
It's all a ploy and an act to get elected to office so that he can implement his communist ideology.
The same goes for 99% of all democrats today.
Thanks for posting this article. I usually include gun control, gun prohibition and second amendment as keywords, even though the space between two words is lost, e.g. guncontrol.
There is no bigger clue than this that he doesn't support the 2nd Amendment. I won't even dignify the thought that he doesn't understand the 2nd A. He does. His Senate record shows he doesn't like it.
That is correct on all counts. Yesterday I heard a soundbite on the radio of Kerry saying that Pres. Bush "promised to lobby for renewal" of the AWB. That is a lie. He said in his 2000 campaign and since that he would sign it if Congress sent it to him. He never said he would lobby for it. Not once. They didn't send it.
Kerry can take responsibility for preventing it from coming to the President's desk. The President said he would veto it if it had attachments to it. In one of the only votes Kerry bothered to come back to Congress for he voted for such an onerous attachment. It never left Congress because of it. Pres. Bush would have signed it if Kerry and the other Dems had let the renewal bill go through clean. He scuttled the AWB. The attachment would have banned basic hunting ammo like the 30-30.
Kerry at bottom of photo. ....hanging out with like-minded fools.
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