Nate Cohn has a very good piece about this over at the New Republic. The Democrats have been gun shy about gun control over the last 12 years-and 3 Presidential elections. In the 90s they were more activist on it and they pushed through the Brady Bill with Clinton's signature in 1993.
However, Clinton himself thinks that was what led to the big GOP gains in 1994 and it's widely felt that guns cost Al Gore the election in 2000. So the Dems have been in retreat on the issue since Gore's defeat, allowing the ban on assault weapons to die without a whimper in 2004 and generally being quiescent on it ever since.
The polls haven't show high support for gun control-at best the country is split with the issue seeming to break for Republicans if anything. Yet as Cohn notes, part of the mediocre poll numbers for gun control may be due to the fact that the Dems have been so quiescent about it. It's the chicken or the egg conundrum. Are Dems timid because the poll numbers are weak or are poll numbers weak because the Dems are timid.
As Mike Bloomberg pointed out in his interview on David Gregory yesterday morning, the NRA may be more paper than tiger these days. Their returns from all the money they put into 2012 weren't so impressive-Obama won easily and most of the Dems in Congress the NRA targeted won.
As Cohn points out, the structure of the Democrats' coalition has changed so that they are now much less dependent on conservative rural voters than at any time in their history. What they have now is strong nonwhite support along with educated white women and the educated well to do suburbs were gun control is at most a wash.
"Democrats backed away from gun control after concluding that the issue cost Al Gore the presidency, since he lost conservative, pro-gun states carried twice by Bill Clinton, like Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, or Missouri. But although national Democrats stayed silent on the issue for the next four presidential elections, neither John Kerry nor Barack Obama reclaimed these conservative, pro-gun Clinton-Bush voters. In fact, Obama and Kerry both performed worse than Gore among conservative rural voters. The fact is that these pro-gun voters are lost to Republicans, and probably for good."
"But though Democrats may have thought they needed these voters to prevail in 2000 or 2004, Democrats have found a way to win without gun lovers in West Virginia: doing even better in suburbs and cities, where support for gun control is presumably at its highest. That’s even true in Ohio, where Obama won Ohio twice by improving upon past Democrats' performances in urban and suburban areas, rather than racking up conservative voters in southeastern Ohio, like Clinton or Carter. The success of Democrats in well-educated suburbs has placed Republicans in a situation not too dissimilar from the one facing Democrats at the beginning of the last decade. To win nationally, Republicans will need to reclaim the socially moderate suburbs around Denver, Washington, and Philadelphia where gun control is at least a neutral issue, if not a real asset to Democrats."
"At the very least, the fact that Democrats can win nationally without southeastern Ohio or West Virginia means that they can address gun control without fear of jeopardizing the presidency. After all, national polls show the public roughly divided on the issue, even though Democrats haven't even argued for gun control in twelve years. But if Democrats are savvy enough to stress popular measures like an assault weapons ban, which commands the support of approximately 60 percent of voters, it could also help them consolidate their gains among suburban women. Of course, it's been a very long time since gun control was championed by Democrats, and it will require the party to realize that the conventional wisdom on gun control politics is out of date. Democrats do not need to be afraid of angering voters who they have already lost, stand no chance of recovering, and no longer need to win presidential elections. Perhaps the tragedy in Newtown will prompt an overdue reassessment."
http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/111151/could-newtown-change-gun-control-politics#
First sign of this reassessment was conservative Demcorat Joe Manchin who's a gun owner and hunter himself:
"On Monday, Sen. Joe Manchin, a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, said it was time to discuss gun policy and move toward action on gun regulation. The conservative West Virginia Democrat said Monday he agrees with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has advocated banning the sale of assault weapons."
"Manchin is the most prominent gun rights advocate to speak after the shooting, telling MSNBC that he is a "proud outdoorsman and hunter, but this doesn't make sense."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/gun-control-sandy-hook_n_2315304.html
The bottom line is if this doesn't make us get serious about gun control what will? As Obama said last night-as did Bloomberg earlier-those who try to hide behind the "complexity" of the problem are telling us to just passively sit by and let this keep happening. Other countries have banned guns after some madman shot up little kids.
While I don't advocate that-and it wouldn't happen anyway-surely the time for responsible gun control has come?
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