538: Why Hillary Clinton Feels Safe Running To The Left Of Bernie Sanders On Guns

[hack89]

Democrats get dyspeptic trying to understand why, despite the large majorities of Americans who favor specific gun control laws, Congress has done nothing. But the answer to that conundrum also explains why Hillary Clinton felt free to propose stronger gun controls than Bernie Sanders has. Earlier this week, she said she would prevent those convicted of domestic abuse from buying guns, close the “gun show” and “Charleston” loopholes,1 and work to repeal a law that helps gun manufacturers avoid legal consequences from the criminal use of their products. She’s the second Democrat to propose tough new regulations. Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, goes even further than Clinton; he proposed a national firearms registry, among other new laws.

The bulk of support for stricter gun control comes from concentrated majorities in cities and in blue states. Opposition is distributed more widely across the country. That disconnect helps prevent gun control laws from passing Congress, but does nothing to discourage a Democrat campaigning for national office from pushing for gun control. The reason for the former is the undemocratic nature of the Senate; the latter is in part because of the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College.

It turns out, moreover, that anti-gun-control voters, who tend to be whiter and older than the overall population, are generally more regular voters, so there’s an additional tug against politicians in states and districts that tend to split along red/blue lines fairly evenly. This also explains why Democratic candidates for president feel free to support gun control now, but members of Congress don’t, especially if they’re from rural states. Our system of government makes it much harder to dislodge strongly held cultural beliefs through legislation, in part because it gives beliefs that originate in rural, less-populous states disproportionate influence. To use another example, it doesn’t matter if majorities of voters support legislation to address climate change if the senators from enough small-population states don’t.

Will Clinton’s proposals complicate her electoral math in the general election? She doesn’t have to worry about most of the rural states that oppose gun control, which are unlikely to support her anyway. And the gun ownership rate in nine swing states is 29 percent, on average. The rate nationally: 29 percent.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-clinton-feels-safe-running-to-sanders-left-on-guns/

Excellent article on the political calculus behind gun control.

[AtomicKitten]

1. It's calculated political expediency; she hypocritically ran as Annie Oakley in 2008.

[hack89]

2. All the candidates are pandering when it comes to gun control

they all know that with a republican controlled Congress nothing will change.

[jkbRN]

3. Ha,

Of course, she is always calculated--that's the sad part.