Posted on 05/05/2002 4:08:00 AM PDT by 2Trievers
A BUNCH of Democratic Southern governors were on a conference call with reporters a few days ago and I was kind of dozing off, when I heard Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes defend the arming of 6-year-olds. "In the South, listen, a rite of passage in a sense is when at 6 or 8 years old you get your first shotgun," Barnes said. Barnes thinks this is a good thing. Me, I am not so sure. I know a number of 6-year-olds. And they are good people and fine Americans. But they do all sorts of dumb things, like eating paste and pinching their little sisters, and pulling the tails on cats. And so do we really want to give them high-powered weapons? Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia recently told a meeting of the National Rifle Association: "What many do not understand is that the gun issue is not just about guns. It's about values. It's about setting priorities. It's about personal freedom. It's about trust." But that is the problem. I question the values and priorities of 6-year-olds — I think their personal freedom to shoot things should be severely limited if not eliminated altogether, and I don't know a single 6-year-old I would trust with a shotgun in his hands. Some Democrats say I am being old-fashioned, however. They say that thinking like mine is the reason Al Gore lost the last election. As it turns out, caving in on gun control and giving in to the National Rifle Association is a very hot topic in the Democratic Party these days. I first wrote about it last June, when Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe revealed that as part of a new Southern strategy, he wanted Democrats to stop talking about gun control. McAuliffe and others share the belief that Al Gore lost some key winnable states in 2000 because of the NRA, and they are correct. But the Democrats are drawing the wrong lesson from it. Gore (who beat George W. Bush in the popular vote by 540,520 votes and lost Florida to Bush by 537 votes, according to the Electoral College website) actually proved what Democratic Southern governors don't like to admit: You can win the Presidency without winning any Southern states. Had Gore just won New Hampshire, for instance, he would be President today, not having won a single state in the south. (The South is generally recognized to comprise the 11 states of the old Confederacy: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee.) But winning Southern states obviously makes winning easier, and Gore might have taken his home state of Tennessee, for instance, had he paid more attention to the campaign being waged against him there by the National Rifle Association. As I wrote in my recent book, "Divided We Stand," Gore botched campaigning in his home state and was late in making personal appearances and putting up TV ads there. In Tennessee, voters were able to start voting as early as Oct. 18, and 36 percent of the electorate cast their ballots before Election Day, many of them having missed Gore's last-minute attempt to win the state. But what really sunk Gore in Tennessee (as in West Virginia and Arkansas) was a very effective campaign by the National Rifle Association, which bought $600,000 in ads in Tennessee and flew Charlton Heston, NRA president, in for big rallies. Bill Clinton had succeeded in making gun control a mainstream political issue and was able to convince hunters that banning assault rifles and cop-killer bullets would in no way harm their sport. Gore was not able to pull this off. Gore was not able to counter NRA attacks and was not able to reach across the cultural divide to hunters, many of whom were among the lower-income white males that he, in general, did poorly with. But the Democratic Party is in danger of drawing the wrong conclusion from all this: Only 28 percent of the votes cast in 2000 came from rural areas, while 29 percent came from urban areas and 43 percent came from the suburbs. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by winning with large margins in urban areas and coming within 2 percentage points of George W. Bush in the suburbs. Bush easily carried rural America. The most logical place for Democrats to make big gains, therefore, is in suburbia, especially with soccer moms who like the Democratic message on tough environmental standards, pro-choice and stricter gun controls. And that is the real issue: If the Democrats wish to take back the White House, they need a candidate who is believable, not one who wants to arm schoolchildren Roger Simon is a political correspondent with U.S. News and World Report.
It is also clear that there is no shortage of moderates or moderate Republicans that could use some refresher education as well. History suggests that Democrats may be uneducable. If this is true, separate countries maybe preferrable.
Same here- got a single-shot bolt-action .22 at age six. And carefully rationed .22 shorts...
An aside? I was raised around water- on the ocean and boats.
I literally can't recall not being able to swim or float on my back.
Yet around here, with the ocean & rivers & streams & marshes & borrow pits everywhere, hardly a year goes by without some poor devil drowning, and the first thing out of friends & relatives mouths is, "He was so scared of water he never learned how to swim..."
My point being, my parents, rather than trying to "make me safe around water by avoiding it" chose the other route to "make the water safe to be around" by teaching me to swim.
It was the same with firearms- when I was really too little to learn, they were kept??? I never knew where- didn't know we had any...
But when I was old enough to handle a rifle, my Dad took an orange, a .22 long rifle, blew up the orange, and explained how "That could be your head, or mine, or your Mother's, or Smokey Joe's ( the dog )"-- and for me, that was sufficient. Not all children have that grasp at that age, but parents generally know these things.
surely you don't really believe that ??
I Agree, but I'll take a stab at it anyway. Basically, libs and most northerners see the gun issue as being about keeping guns out of the hands of street gangs (kids), criminals and other people who might hurt them. Southerners see the gun issue as being about keeping the right to bear arms and protecting the family. Funny thing is, I believe ALL of us are for keeping guns out of the hands of criminals -- Southerners can understand that and agree with the concept. On the other hand, libs and most northerners can't/won't see our side -- therefore they want to dictate to us on guns. Big mistake.
Well, then:
As an aside, she now loves GBJr.
Apparently that swings both ways.
i'd likely buy that,
but all your previous statement tends to do is piss off your northern allies ...
I grew up in the South, and I never owned a gun until I was and adult, married, and a father.
Come to think of it--I had many friend, and I never knew anyone who had a shotgun as a child--and especially at age 6. None of my numerous friends owned a gun at age 6. None owned a shotgun as a child.
As far as I know, Barnes is the only person who experienced this "right of passage"--but he's certainly not the only Democrat who doesn't bother to get his facts straight.
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