The dark reason why guns are virtually guaranteed to be a major issue of the 2016 campaign

The dark reason why guns are virtually guaranteed to be a major issue of the 2016 campaign

After years of ducking presidential-campaign battles over gun laws out of fear of the powerful gun lobby, it appears that Democrats are finally ready to go on the offensive….

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, for example, set the tone early in her campaign after a mass shooting at a historically African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. And she has become much more vocal in her calls for stricter gun laws, making it a recurring feature in her stump speeches….

The new focus, then, is an interesting political calculus — because many signs actually show that Americans’ support for gun rights is growing….

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, gave a reminder that President Bill Clinton himself admitted that threatening gun rights can be a perilous issue politically.

“Hillary Clinton is repeating the error her husband made in 1994 — pushing for gun-control legislation. He realized his mistake and said so,” Pratt told Business Insider. “Hillary is so ideological that she seems oblivious to the reality of gun-control politics. She seems doomed to repeat her husband’s political error.”…

Business Insider