Dodging The Bullet

If there was ever to be a convergence of moment and messenger for tough gun control, it might have come on the day last week when the sniper killed his final victim. It was then that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whose family has twice been devastated by guns and who is locked in a tight race to govern the state where six of the 10 sniper murders took place, was invited by CNN to say something on the subject. The lieutenant governor of Maryland chose her words carefully, never once uttering "gun control," but referring instead to her support for "commonsense gun laws." Townsend's only new firearm proposal has been an incremental one, extending Maryland's handgun ballistics-fingerprinting system to assault weapons and semiautomatic rifles.

But even that is much further than most Democrats are going this year, which is why gun-control advocates don't expect the sniper attacks to produce any significant new laws. Outside a few liberal states like California and New Jersey, where gun control still plays on the stump, you are more likely these days to hear Democratic candidates touting their Second Amendment bona fides. Bill Clinton's former Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, is campaigning for Governor as "the choice for New Mexico gun owners and sportsmen." Joe Turnham, a Democrat running for Congress in Alabama, sums himself up this way: "pro-gun, pro-God, pro--good ole boy." And Missouri's Jean Carnahan, battling to hold on to her Senate seat, boasts of the sharpshooting medal that she won in college. She has even invited reporters to watch her waste a few skeet with her new 20-gauge Browning Citori shotgun.

Democrats know that public support for gun control has been falling. In the latest TIME/CNN poll, taken just before the suspects were caught, 51% of respondents favored stricter gun laws--an 8% decline from January 2000, when memories of the Columbine massacre were still fresh. Gun-rights groups say the 9/11 terrorist attacks left more Americans wanting to protect themselves. Gun sales soared, and the Senate voted to allow pilots to carry guns in the cockpit. It's no wonder that even with the sniper at large early last week, National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) president Charlton Heston, 79, stood at a rally for Republican candidates, flintlock over his head, and challenged gun-control advocates to pry the rifle "from my cold, dead hands."

But Democrats' skittishness on gun control also dates back to their traumatic experience in the 2000 election. To settle the score after the Clinton Administration muscled through the most significant new gun restrictions in nearly 30 years--the 1993 Brady Law requiring background checks for gun buyers and a ban on assault weapons--the gun lobby launched a $13 million attack. Its get-out-the-vote drives, political contributions and advertising helped defeat Al Gore in such crucial places as Arkansas, West Virginia and even Tennessee, his home state.