AlterNet: Untold Story of Election 2008: The Death of the NRA

[marmar]

Untold Story of Election 2008: The Death of the NRA

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted December 4, 2008.

Among the big losers in November were the NRA and the myth of the once-feared "NRA Voter." Reform of our gun laws is on the way.



Last month, voters across the country took a cue from the late Charlton Heston and pried the assault weapon from the NRA's cold, dead hands.

Although the gun group unleashed everything in its arsenal to defeat Barack Obama and dozens of down ticket gun-control candidates, it lost by a margin as historic as the war chest it opened in an attempt to convince voters that Democrats were mortal enemies of the Second Amendment. Despite expending nearly $7 million in a national fear campaign, NRA-endorsed candidates lost 80 percent of their races against gun-control candidates. More than 90 percent of candidates endorsed by the NRA's nemesis, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, won their races. If 2008 was, in the NRA's own words, "arguably the most important year in its history," then the election results suggest that the gun group is arguably the most overhyped and impotent special-interest lobby in the country. The NRA even got its chamber cleaned in its home state of Virginia.

The sweeping victory for gun control has been one of the most underreported stories of the election. This is largely because it was immediately overshadowed by the trendy postelection narrative of spiking gun sales and runs on assault weapons. In recent weeks, it seems as if every TV news program and newspaper in the country has featured some variation on the following story: Anxious Americans are cleaning out their local gun stores in anticipation of a.) Barack Obama's radical anti-gun agenda; b.) social chaos engendered by economic collapse; or c.) both.

No doubt thousands of paranoid gun owners have purchased Glocks and AR-15 assault rifles out of such fears. And it is true that the economic crisis has fueled an interest in personal protection and even Northern Idaho-style survivalism. But sensational stories about booming holiday-season gun sales obscure a more profound phenomenon: the coalescence of a new consensus, joined by the majority of the nation's gun owners, in favor of what gun controllers call "commonsense reform." A subtext of this phenomenon is the evaporation, first witnessed in 2006 and reinforced last month, of the idea that guns are a sure thing conservative wedge issue. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/109841/untold_story_of_election_2008%3A_the_death_of_the_nra/

[derby378]

1. "It's the ECONOMY, stupid!"

Seriously, this guy thinks the Brady Campaign brought down the NRA? He calls this a "sweeping victory for gun control?" People were voting their pocketbooks and paychecks. This is a waste of bandwidth, and utter BS.

In addition, Zaitchik is a lousy researcher. He mentions Ray Schoenke of AHSA (and got the name of the group wrong), but if he had just done a little digging, Schoenke and the AHSA have stated they are opposed to Obama reinstating a ban on semi-automatics. I personally spoke with Schoenke on the phone about this. And since Schoenke campaigned for Obama while most of the Bradys did not, who do you think Obama is going to listen to first?

[old mark]

2. More of the brady bunch's lies. These people are amazing

in their ability to completly ignore the truth when it doesn't suit them and to fabricate "facts" that they think will help their organization.
After all, they are a Republican group who have been blaming the Democrats for idiotic "gun control" measures for decades.

mark

[deaniac21]

3. This article is HIGH COMEDY. Total lack of perspective.

[JHB]

4. The "evaporation" of guns as a conservative wedge issue is due to...

...the evaporation of Democratic candidates making guns an issue. As far as I could tell, most tried to get as far away from the issue as possible, for good reason.

How Zaitchik construes the results of 2006 and 2008 as victories for the gun-control lobby is an exercise in taffy pulling.

[Lex]

5. Plus the NRA and McCain weren't exactly best friends

so it seems like the NRA didn't go full tilt for him like they did for Bush.

[derby378]

6. Let's also count the number of anti-ban Democratic Senators

Max Baucus (MT)
Bob Casey (PA)
Russ Feingold (WI)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Harry Reid (NV)
Jon Tester (MT)
Jim Webb (VA)

That's eight right there. With 58 Democratic Senators on the docket for the next session so far, that can block any new talk of a ban right there. Still waiting for the final word on the Franken race in MN, however. Hope he beats Coleman, but he needs to realize that the Second Amendment means what it says - just like the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, etc.