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player ready...by Jill Zuckman
In polling swing voters about Sen. John McCain, the Democratic National Committee gave them information that seems decidedly at odds with the facts.
During a briefing this afternoon, Democratic pollster Allan Rivlin said that swing voters in 17 states reacted negatively when they learned that McCain no longer supported closing the gun show loophole and opposed any new gun control laws.
In fact, McCain continues to support closing the gun show loophole, which he successfully co-sponsored with Sen. Joseph Lieberman. DNC officials insisted that McCain no longer supports closing the loophole, arguing that he was quoted saying that he does not support new gun control laws following the shootings at Virginia Tech.
“If you tell voters that he doesn’t support closing the gun show loophole, that’s misleading,” said Matt Bennett, who co-founded Americans for Gun Safety and worked closely with McCain and Lieberman to help pass their amendment in the Senate.
McCain also appeared in advertisements in movie theaters around the country about closing the gun show loophole and advocating for gun safety – he urged people to keep their guns locked at home. His position on guns is spelled out on his campaign web site at www.johnmccain.com.
“They are blowing up a semantic difference over whether closing a loophole in an existing law is a new gun control law,” said Bennett, now at the Democratic strategy group, Third Way. “The fact is he does support passing legislation to close that loophole no matter how you define it.”
At the DNC press conference, Chairman Howard Dean, Communications Director Karen Finney and Research Director Mike Gehrke all insisted that McCain opposes closing the loophole, which they argue is a flip-flop.
“It’s not to our advantage to push stories that aren’t true,” said Dean, adding that Democrats would continue to talk about McCain’s “100 years” comment about Iraq, too.
Under the Brady Act from 1993, anyone buying a gun must go through a background check first. At gun shows, licensed gun dealers must still conduct background checks, but unlicensed gun sellers are not required to do that, making gun shows a popular shopping spot for criminals and potentially terrorists.
McCain and Lieberman tried to close the loophole in 2004 with an amendment that passed the Senate overwhelmingly but died later. Both Senators John Kerry and John Edwards rushed back from the presidential campaign trail to vote for the amendment.
That amendment is one of the reasons that the NRA portrayed McCain as a devil on the cover of its magazine and has not endorsed him for president.
The Democrats, said Bennett, “have an opportunity to separate McCain from the NRA and their 65 million gun owners by pointing out that he came our way on this issue.”