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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (438103)	8/4/2003 3:37:06 PM
From: MSI	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

boomundo.com "SENSIBLE GUN LAWS Gov. Howard Dean, M.D. Vermont has the lowest homicide rate in the United States. During my eleven years as Governor, the highest number of murders in a single year was 25 and the lowest number was 5. Over half of these were domestic assaults, and the majority were not committed with a firearm. This leads to my belief that if you say "gun control" in Vermont, Tennessee or Colorado, people think it means taking away their hunting rifle. If you say "gun control" in New York City or Los Angeles, people are relieved at the prospect of having Uzis or illegal handguns taken off the streets. I think Vermont ought to be able to have a different set of laws than California. I believe we should keep and enforce the federal gun laws we have - including the assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill - and close the gun show loophole using Insta-check and then let the states decide for themselves what, if any, additional gun control laws they want. Just as we resist attempts by President Bush to dictate to the states how we run our school systems and what kind of welfare programs to have, we need to resist attempts to tell states how to deal with guns beyond existing federal law" Re: the NRA and Dean's position "Gov. Dean is the only Democrat running for President to have received an "A" rating from the NRA. Dean's position on sensible gun laws should merit the NRA's endorsement of him for the democratic nomination. If the NRA, and it's 5 million plus members, were to endorse Dean it would bring a windfall of support. As Gov. Dean says, there are many people who have been voting Republican for the past 50 years - what do they have to show for it? Their children don't have health insurance either. If the gun control issue was a non-issue in the 2004 election, many NRA voters would then feel as though they could make a choice that would ACTUALLY benefit them and their families. The NRA under CEO LaPierre has been known to mis-report its own ratings in campaign mailings when it is beneficial to the GOP; for example, in the 1998 Illinois U.S. Senate race between Carol Moseley-Braun and Peter Fitzgerald, the NRA sent postcards to voters which claimed that Fitzgerald had an "A" rating as a state legislator, when, in fact, he had only a "C." Gov. Dean, however, has widely publicized his "A" rating, and an attempt by LaPierre to distort this fact would likely backfire. If Republicans can't portray the 2004 election as a referendum on gun rights, it's unclear whether the NRA would be able to turn out such impressive numbers for Republicans as they did in the 2000 election and in the mid-term elections of 2002.