The D.C. Handgun Ruling and Talking Heads

27Jun08

A couple of notes regarding Chris Matthews and his panelists yesterday on the Supreme Court overturning the District of Colombia handgun ban.

Chris Matthews was pushing for the idea that this ruling had some impact on the presidential elections despite no plausible explanation as to how this would happen. His central claim seemed to be that Barack Obama had said that handgun ban was constitutional (a radical position supported by only 4 of the 9 members of the Supreme Court) and some Obama aid had something kind of sorta backed away from that position. And shocker McCain criticized Obama over the issue today. Maybe there are ways the Republicans can make this a campaign issue, but I haven’t seen any explain how that could happen in a compelling way. They can’t just scream about elites and guns and expect America to care despite there being no legislation about guns on the agenda for the foreseeable.

NRA head Wayne LaPierre really seemed unprepared to me. At one point he was implying that liberal elites like guns, but want to keep them out the hands of the poor (presumably white) man’s hands. That’s just absurd. Mostly though what made his comments seem so goofy to me was his attempt to wrap them around his usual rhetoric about people defending their homes etc, without trying to actually discuss the region (Washington D.C.) effected by the Supreme Court ruling. As Matthews pointed out D.C. would seem to make a good case for the usefulness of gun ownership. The problem with the NRA is that they largely represent people that don’t need guns for self protection and don’t actually live anywhere that is going to pass guns restrictions. Subsequently there propaganda doesn’t really seem appropriate for the situation in D.C.

The Brady Campaign had guy on as well that sort of struck me as a clever spin artist. He was advancing the idea that the Supreme Court ruling was good for gun control because it both undermined the slippery slope argument that the NRA is always putting out, and it implicitly endorsed more moderate gun control restrictions. I’m not sure how valid those points are, the Defense of Marriage Act was supposed to pre-empt further anti gay marriage legislation and that didn’t work out at all and it ignores the whole issue that the Supreme Court had never ruled the 2nd amendment meant you had right to guns to protect yourself.

Filed under: Culture, Politics, United States   |  1 Comment
Tags: Brady Campaign, Chris Matthews, NRA, Supreme Court Rulings