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May 4, 2000
Gun politics hits airwaves as Bush and
Gore trade barbs
By LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pouncing on a videotape linking George
W. Bush to the gun lobby, Al Gore suggested Thursday that his
presidential rival would be a puppet of the National Rifle Association.
Bush insisted he'll make decisions on his own. “My job is
to do what I think is right,” he said.
Their long-distance exchange from the campaign trail came after
Handgun Control Inc. released an ad featuring a top NRA official
touting the group's clout in a potential Bush White House.
“If we win we'll have a president ... where we work out of
their office,” Kayne Robinson, the NRA first vice president,
tells a gathering in ad footage from a tape bought for $20 from
the NRA Web site.
Gore moved quickly to capitalize on the ad.
“He wants to take the gun lobbyists out of the lobby and
put them right in the Oval Office. Maybe he would pick (NRA president)
Charlton Heston as the next surgeon general,” Gore, the presumptive
Democratic nominee, told a conference of health care journalists
in Chicago.
On the NRA tape, Robinson calls Gore an “antigun fanatic”
and said electing him would be a “horror story.” But
with Bush, the likely Republican nominee, they will have “unbelievably
friendly relations.”
“If we win, we'll have a Supreme Court that will back us
to the hilt,” Robinson added.
Bush distanced himself from the NRA.
“I don't want to disappoint the man, but I'll be setting
up shop in the White House,” he told reporters at a campaign
stop in Mission Viejo, Calif. “It'll be my office, I'll make
the decisions as to what goes on in the White House. I'll make
it clear what my positions are, and if some people on sides of
the issue can't agree, so be it.... My job is to do what I think
is right.
“This is an attempt by my opponent to frighten people,”
Bush added. “I'm not going to let that happen.”
The NRA contends the politics of guns would be considerably friendlier
under a Bush administration.
“The antigun people have had literally unlimited access to
the (Clinton) White House ... working right out of the office,”
said Robinson, who also chairs the Iowa Republican Party. “We've
been on the outside of the fence looking in. We will do everything
we can to support the candidate that supports the Second Amendment.”
Gore regularly talks about his support for gun control, appealing
to suburban women and independent voters who will decide the election
and who favor Bush by significant margins. At the same time, recent
polls find that about six in 10 Americans say they want stricter
gun laws.
The vice president supports licensing all new handgun purchases,
a waiting period for buying guns and limiting individual gun sales
to one per month. Gore also supports mandatory child safety locks
and has worked to require background checks for gun purchases
at gun shows.
Bush supports instant background checks at gun shows. The problem,
gun control advocates say, is when a check turns up something
questionable and cannot be completed quickly. Bush does not want
to deny purchases under these situations, critics say.
The Texas governor now supports mandatory child safety locks,
after first saying they should be voluntary.
Bush also supports raising the minimum age for possessing a gun
from 18 to 21, and Gore agrees. Texas is one of the few states
without a minimum age requirement and critics say Bush has not
worked to institute one.
Gore, in criticizing his rival, pointed to two pieces of pro-gun
legislation that Bush signed. One allows Texans to carry concealed
weapons; the second prevents Texas cities from suing gun makers.
The Handgun Control ad focuses on the concealed weapons issue,
saying he signed a law that allowed guns “in churches, nursing
homes, even amusement parks.”
Actually, the law bans concealed weapons from such places, but
Bush signed follow-up legislation saying the law can only be enforced
if visitors are notified of the rules in posted signs or with
hand-out cards.
The 30-second spot began airing Thursday in seven states, including
several in the Midwest, and will run for a week. The group, which
would not identify the states, said it was spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
A Bush campaign official said the ad was airing in Austin, Texas;
Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Lansing, Mich.; Sacramento, Calif.; St.
Louis and Washington, DC. Tracking suggested the group was spending
less than $100,000, the official said, with most of it in Washington.
Meanwhile, negotiations have broken down between gunmakers and
31 cities that have sued them in an attempt to hold gun manufacturers
liable for gun violence, accusing them of failing to use safety
features. Talks broke down after the White House wanted to join
in, gun advocates said.
Now, gunmakers are looking ahead to a new administration, said
Paul Jannuzzo, general counsel for Glock Inc., and Robert Delfay,
president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“If there is a Republican administration in 2001,” Delfay
said, “there will be a much more favorable view of an American's
right to keep and bear firearms than there currently is.”
Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, involved in the talks, said the
NRA is waiting for November: “They're banking on George Bush
becoming President Bush, and he will do for them what he did in
Texas, which is immunize gun manufactures.”
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KRT, The Abilene Reporter-News
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