PLATFORM CONFIRMS DEMS STILL ‘DON’T GET IT’ ABOUT GUN RIGHTS, SAYS CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – The 2008 Democratic Party’s draft platform confirms that the party still “doesn’t get it” about Second Amendment gun rights versus the Utopian fantasy that gun control laws will somehow make neighborhoods safer, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“While promising to preserve our Second Amendment rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “the party platform demonizes semiautomatic sport utility rifles and wants them banned, calls for anti-gun show legislation and proposes so-called ‘common-sense’ gun laws. Many Democrats believe bans on most guns are ‘common sense’ and they still support the handgun ban in Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago. Boiled down, all it really means is that the Democrats are still the party of gun control no matter how they try to re-package the rhetoric, and they know it.”

Gottlieb, co-author of a new book called These Dogs Don’t Hunt: The Democrats’ War on Guns, said the party is shamelessly telling American gun owners that they embrace the rights of millions of shooters, hunters and gun collectors, “but there’s a caveat.”

“The party’s gun control platform plank puts the lie to everything they say,” he added. “As Democrats descend on Denver to nominate a candidate who is on record in opposition to sensible concealed carry laws, we encourage gun owners across the country, and especially in Colorado, to remind the party that the Supreme Court in June held that gun bans are unconstitutional. Yet here they are, calling for a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ even after years of experience tells us that Bill Clinton’s ban accomplished nothing, and cost the party control of Congress in 1994.

“Democrats want to regulate gun shows out of business,” he continued, “even after a study done for the Justice Department found that gun shows are rarely the source of firearms used by criminals. Gun shows provide a forum, a gathering place for law-abiding gun owners to discuss ideas and issues, and share constitutionally protected freedoms of speech, assembly and the right to keep and bear arms. Increasingly, Democrats seem averse to the exercise of these rights by anyone who does not share their philosophy. And this is the party of inclusion?

“Democrats have an opportunity to reject and repudiate this platform,” Gottlieb concluded. “If they do not, that tells American gun owners everything they need to know about Democrats as November approaches.”