Word: gunness
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...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...
...lesson was not lost on other Democrats. A year later, Mark Warner ardently courted gun owners in heavily Republican Virginia--and cruised to victory in the Governor's race. In this year's excruciatingly close House and Senate elections, many of the hardest-fought races are in Southern and Western states and semi-rural congressional districts, which explains why national Democratic leaders are doing their best to stay away from the gun issue entirely. The idea of gun control is so out of favor that Handgun Control Inc., a leading lobby organization, changed its name last year to the Brady...
Meanwhile, gun-rights advocates have been emboldened by an Administration that is sympathetic to their cause. The closeness was underscored by the fact that the military-style gun used in the sniper attacks--named, unfortunately for the White House, Bushmaster XM15--was manufactured by a company owned by Richard Dyke, a Bush fund raiser. Dyke, who briefly headed George W. Bush's 2000 fund-raising operation in Maine, had to give up that job when a controversy erupted over the fact that his firm makes assault weapons; Dyke said he wanted to avoid attracting bad publicity to the candidate...
...turnabout from the government's long-standing reading of the amendment's scope as being limited to state militias, which has reflected a 1939 Supreme Court decision. As a result, federal prosecutors are being swamped by court motions from defendants who quote Ashcroft in their argument for having federal gun charges against them dismissed. Among them: convicted American Taliban John Walker Lindh...
Still, the sniper spree, even if it has not created a new surge of gun-control legislation, may have temporarily slowed some of the gains that the gun lobby was making in Congress. House Republican leaders quietly delayed a vote on the N.R.A.'s top priority--legislation that would forbid local governments to sue gunmakers. But with well more than half the House signed on as co-sponsors, the bill is likely to return...