The New Politics of Gun Control

Democrats are finally leaning in, while Republicans talk compromise.

New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte’s biggest challenge stood just a few feet away from her at the rustic cottage near Concord. While Ayotte made her rounds, posing for pictures and hugging friends, retired teacher Ellen Bryan wiped sweat from her brow and described why she had not yet made up her mind about who she would vote for in November.

Bryan, 64, likes the Republican Ayotte and even said she leaned toward supporting her, but then tears welled in her eyes as she remembered the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. She also remembered Ayotte’s decision to vote against tighter gun laws in the aftermath. “I’m not a gun fan,” said Bryan, a self-described military brat who grew up around guns and has family members who hunt. “There’s a time and a place for everything, but there are too many guns. How can you make sure gun owners are responsible?”

Since Newtown, polls in New Hampshire have shown that a large majority of residents support universal background checks on gun purchases, which Ayotte opposed. Her Democratic challenger, Governor Maggie Hassan, twice vetoed measures to allow concealed carry in the state without a permit. Her approval ratings didn’t tank, and the Republican-controlled legislature didn’t override her vetoes. Now Hassan is running slightly ahead of Ayotte in recent head-to-head polls, cheering Democrats, who need to pick up just four seats in the U.S. Senate–and the White House–to regain control.

What is true in New Hampshire is true nationwide. Polls show about 9 out of 10 Americans support universal background checks on gun purchases and a majority support bans on high-capacity magazines. As the country becomes more urban and more diverse, some pollsters find fewer people telling them they have a gun at home than at any other point in almost 40 years. Democrats, emboldened by the data, are on the offensive.

That guns are even a central issue in 2016 is something of a turnaround. The last time this happened in a national election was in the wake of a 1994 assault-weapons ban that then President Bill Clinton signed into law just 56 days before the midterm elections. Gun-rights groups mounted a ferocious countercampaign, and Democrats lost a net 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Clinton said the vote on guns “devastated” his party’s majorities in 1994 and probably hurt Al Gore’s chances of winning the White House in 2000.

But the political calculus has changed. Grisly mass shootings now seem commonplace in churches, workplaces and schools. Fears of lone wolves with semiautomatics seem to have grown. While gun murders are about half what they were in 1993, the statistics are little comfort in the face of such high-profile incidents.

But political consultants say the public demand for some action short of gun confiscation remains very real, though the language candidates use can matter a great deal. Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, who works with Giffords’ group, tells clients to talk about “the gun lobby” but not the NRA, which in many voters’ minds is about hunting and sport. She tells candidates to talk about closing loopholes, not about stricter gun laws. Never promise that anything is a fix-all or use the loaded phrase gun control.

Following this script, the Democrats devoted prime-time hours of their four-day nominating convention in Philadelphia in July to gun safety, lining up victims’ families, advocates and celebrities to bemoan the atrocities committed by horrible people who should never have had access to guns.

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