The GOP Has a Way to Win Back Women: Shift the Debate on Guns

In U.S. politics, some issues traditionally have generated substantial heat and very little light. Abortion is one; guns are another. These issues are the classic “losers,” because a strong position on either side antagonizes nearly half of the electorate. Historically, politicians shun these issues because almost nothing an advocate can do or say will sway the other side.

Now that may be changing a bit when it comes to the firearms issue. Shifting the focus from “gun control” to “gun safety” opened a large middle ground with the potential to engage all but the zealots on the extreme fringes of the issue. For the rational middle, there is agreement that the right of gun ownership brings with it a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of kids and criminals.

For the Republican Party, this movement toward gun safety is particularly fortuitous. As the Republican National Committee chairman, Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, noted at a recent meeting in Boston, the GOP’s hold on the White House and the House of Representatives is tenuous at best. It will continue only if the party does better with women voters. Had only women voted in 2000, Gilmore pointed out, Al Gore would have won in a landslide and Dick Gephardt would be speaker of the House.

No one plausibly can suggest that women are a monolithic voting bloc. But nearly all surveys show that women are particularly interested in the health, education and safety of their children, and that certainly includes gun safety. It is an issue that is staring us smack in the face as Republicans. Continued across-the-board intransigence on gun questions will not only affect our viability as a national political party but also will call into question our moral fitness to lead.

The hallmark of true conservatism is responsibility, and our party’s attitude toward guns must not only be responsible; it must be perceived as responsible. How much longer will we have to watch in horror the televised reports of random shootings in our high schools before we take a few modest steps to restrict access to guns only to those entitled to use them?

A simple first step would be to close what has been called the “gun-show loophole,” which now permits criminals to purchase guns at gun shows without the same background check everyone faces at a gun store. The measure has almost universal support from all voting segments, but it is steadfastly opposed by the National Rifle Assn., a position that undermines the credibility of the organization and diminishes its backers.

The NRA argues that closing the loophole would put gun shows out of business. And yet in the NRA heartland of Pennsylvania, the gun-show loophole was closed by state law and Pennsylvania still has more gun shows than all but two other states. In the pro-gun states of Colorado and Oregon, ballot measures closing the loophole passed overwhelmingly last fall, with support that was strong among gun owners and stratospheric among women. Even the conservative governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, supported this initiative and was able to hold his right-of-center coalition together.

In his campaign for president, then-Gov. George W. Bush said he believed that “the instant check system is the best way to keep criminals from buying guns at gun shows” and that he supported “changing federal law to give gun-show sponsors special access to the National Instant Check System.”

That view is now embodied in legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but there has been little movement on the bill this year. The need for the GOP to move to the center on gun safety is urgent.

The Republican Party must collectively support this conscious first step toward gun safety. Our party must move from being perceived as largely captive to special interests on this issue to being seen as preserving gun rights while being tough on criminals who use guns.

The NRA should come around on this common-sense initiative and help the GOP to remove its head from the sand.

A party that regularly kowtows to the special interests (as the Democrats have done historically) calls into question its basic purpose and ultimately becomes caricatured as a Geppetto Party--controlled by many strings. Closing the gun-show loophole would be a declaration of independence from the NRA by the GOP. Doing so would also give Republican members of Congress an issue to campaign for, and in politics, offense is always better than defense.