More on Kerry attemp to Fool Gun Owners

[PABuck_HNTR]

It seems to be working in some states......



Kerry stalks hunters for votes with stand on gun rights
Knight Ridder News

FORT MADISON, Iowa - As John Kerry worked the rope line by a riverside war memorial in this small Mississippi River town, men and women thrust copies of the same 8x10 glossy into his hands. Dutifully, he scrawled his name with a Sharpie pen. Once, twice, three times. They kept coming.

The photo wasn't the usual politician's pose. Taken last October at an Iowa farm, it showed Kerry in full hunting regalia with a 12-gauge shotgun in his hands. Among those clutching the pictures were Iowa prison guards, many of them wearing union T-shirts.

America's political debate over guns is different this year.


Four years ago, Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley argued the merits of licensing or registering gun owners and weapons, a debate that branded Gore as anti-gun.

Now, Kerry leads Democrats in championing gun rights in a bid to reach swing-voting hunters. Worried that a weak foothold with the so-called hook-and-bullet crowd could cost them the election, Democrats have locked and loaded and changed their tune, their image, even their party platform.

As Kerry toured battleground states in recent days, time and again he told audiences that he's an outdoorsman who embraces the Second Amendment, the constitutional right to bear arms.

"You know I'm a hunter and a fisherman," he said in Smithville, Mo. "I've been a hunter since I was about 12 years old. I'm a gun owner; I believe in the Second Amendment. I know it matters out here in parts of the world."

Those parts of the world tend to be where the election will be decided. About 7.2 million hunters live in battleground states, with the highest numbers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio.

Kerry's target is white male swing voters who live in union households or small towns and who in the past have mistrusted Democrats on guns but may now mistrust President Bush on the economy and jobs.

"Kerry has moved to the center (on guns), and it enables Kerry to neutralize a problem that hurt Gore," said Casey Anderson, the executive director of Americans for Gun Safety.

The Kerry camp's strategy is comprehensive and calculated.

It includes putting Kerry's undeniable outdoor skills on full media display.

No bird hunt, no trap shoot goes unrecorded by cameras and reporters. In last fall's pheasant hunt in Iowa, he shot two birds with two shots. Last month in Wisconsin, he nailed 17 out of 25 clay pigeons at the Gunslick Trap Club.

The effort also involves reaching out to labor in particular. The hunting photograph that found its way into the hands of the unionized corrections officers in Iowa got there thanks to Michael Malaise, Kerry's Iowa director.

"I'm passing them around at every union hall I can find," he said.

That day in Iowa, the tactic seemed to be having some effect.

"He knows people want to go out and hunt," said Raleigh Helmick, who works at the Iowa State Penitentiary. "But I can't believe that our forefathers, when they sat down and decided you have the right to bear arms, had in the back of their minds that somebody would have a weapon like an Uzi or an M-16, M-14. They didn't have a clue."

The attention to gun owners is part of a broader effort by Kerry and the Democrats to reach out to undecided and independent voters - a primary focus of his current coast-to-coast trek.

For the first time, the Democratic Party platform endorses a right to own firearms. Terms such as "gun control" have been jettisoned in favor of "gun safety," and the major gun item on the legislative agenda is to renew a 10-year-old ban on assault weapons, not to impose new restrictions on gun purchases or ownership.

"Democrats understand that in many places 'gun control' means 'steady aim,' " said Sen. John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat and gun owner who'd urged the party to moderate its stance on guns. "But even with a good-ole-boy hunter, there's a wife and a couple of kids who say, 'It's OK for you to hunt, but let's keep the guns locked up and safe.' "

Both Bush and Kerry support extending the assault weapons ban, which expires Sept. 13.

But the National Rifle Association doesn't, and so far efforts to pass an extension have failed. Advocates of the ban say Bush could have done more but has paid only lip service to the issue.

Kerry interrupted his campaign in March to return to the Senate to speak and vote on legislation that would have extended the ban, required background checks at gun shows and provided immunity from lawsuits to gun manufacturers. But the NRA, a staunch backer of the immunity provision, withdrew its support when the assault weapons and gun-show provisions were added, and bipartisan backing for the bill collapsed.

Now, as he campaigns in hunting states, Kerry limits his discussion of guns to asserting support for the Second Amendment.

"I would like to see him push a little bit harder," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who became a leading gun-control advocate after her husband was shot and killed, and her son injured, in a commuter train rampage in 1993. "I'd like him to speak up."

Instead, after citing his hunting and fishing credentials in rural areas and small towns, Kerry sidesteps gun legislation and moves on to the environment, arguing that clean water and unspoiled wildlife habitats are points of common ground between sportsmen and the Democratic Party.

[strut]

Golly, don't people, especially hunters and gun-owners have enough sense to just check his voting record on gun issues. This man is a snake in the grass and will say anything to get elected, I thought algore was bad but I don't think he could hold this cat a light.

If we get kerry and a democrat controlled house and senate we ain't seen anything yet when it comes to trampling our 2nd amendment.

WAKE-UP AMERICA.

[mike bell]

This is blaspheme!!!!!!
If any of you beleive this crap, LOOK AT HIS VOTING RECORD!!!!!!!

[Jimmy S]

Smart move by Kerry...He knows he has the edge in labor states but that could backfire if he went against the hunters in those states. Soooooo, he portrays the hunter image. Give it time, when everyone is back from summer vacations and again the country begins focusing on the election. His voting record on many issues, including gun control will be brought front and center and it's then that we hope Americans will see him for what he really is. I expect they will and pray they will.

[kevin1]

FFYG ,
your title contains only one word that means anything ,
and that word describes Skerry perfectly :

FOOL !

[strut]

Any gun-owner that votes for kerry deserves to lose their right to own a firearm, If they don't care enough to check into this character before they vote for him then what ever they get they deserve, if only they did'nt drag us all down with them.