Tuesday night, the Brady Campaign issued a statement even before Sen. Barack Obama was declared president-elect, saying the political environment is better than it’s been in years for “progress on gun violence prevention.”
The NRA spent millions on ads during the campaign, warning that Sen. Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president in American history.
But according to the Brady Campaign, the NRA failed to deliver its “supposed block of single-issue voters” in Tuesday’s election. According to exit polls, the economy took precedence for many voters.
“America should take notice that reasonable policies on guns are carrying the day,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, which endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket.
The Brady Campaign says Obama “consistently supported common sense gun laws in the U.S. Senate and in the Illinois State Senate. Senator Biden not only has supported, but also has been a leader for strong gun laws throughout his career in the U.S. Senate.”
Not only did Obama win the presidency, but NRA-endorsed senators lost their elections in North Carolina, New Hampshire and New Mexico, the Brady Campaign noted.
Brady Campaign officials said it appears that the June Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller may be starting to have an impact on political races — “with the gun lobby failing to convince law-abiding gun owners that an Obama-Biden Administration would infringe on anyone’s basic Constitutional rights.”
“The gun issue has clearly lost its status as a ‘wedge’ issue in most places and most races,” Helmke said.
The NRA, in a brief statement on its Web site, said Obama’s presidency will be disastrous for the firearms industry.
”Just look at a couple of the things Obama has proposed: a 500 percent increase on excise taxes for guns and ammunition, and a ban on gun stores within five miles of a school or a park,” said the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.
“Those two measures wouldn’t just decimate the firearms industry, they would kill it. That, in turn, would have a drastic effect on our military, because the same companies that sell guns to civilians are also the ones selling guns to the government. I wonder how Obama would feel about a multi-billion dollar bailout of the firearms industry, because that’s what just two of his proposals would require.”
