Gun control could be the glue that holds Democrats together

President Joe Biden will travel to Connecticut on Friday to speak on one of the key issues that unite his ideologically and demographically diverse coalition: gun control.

Biden’s speech Friday at the Safer Communities National Summit in Hartford, hosted by major gun control groups, is not officially a campaign event. Yet it comes as Biden is entering his most intense period of political activity since he announced he would run for re-election in April, a day before his first official re-election bid rally.

A central problem facing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election bid is simple: His coalition includes everyone from moderate baby boomers in the suburbs to progressive college students in inner cities, anchored by black voters. and Latinos across the country. Gun control is a key issue that unites these disparate groups.

In the last year and change alone, mass shootings have killed people in white Midwestern communities, West Coast Asian Communities and Northeastern urban black communities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 49,000 Americans died from gun violence in 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available. And as the count of gun deaths rises, so does the American willingness to address it as a political issue.

“It can affect anyone. No one is safe anymore,” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, a national public opinion research and Democratic political strategy group that worked with the Biden campaign in 2020. “Whether you’re talking about your church, your workplace, your grocery store, your kids’ school.”

She said the broad and growing impact of gun violence means it has cross-spectrum appeal as a political issue.

“Gun violence is becoming a great equalizer,” Lake said. Gun suicides in rural America, community violence in urban areas, and mass shootings in public places are indiscriminate in who they injure or kill. “There is a sense that there is now a broad reach of all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances,” she added.

Polls indicate significant concern about the issue of gun violence, across demographics: Gun safety advocacy group Giffords fall 2022 numbers found that gun violence was a major issue for 87% of suburban women voters, with 76% of the demographic saying they were ‘concerned’ about shootings In particular. Shootings were also a top concern for Hispanic and independent voters. Meanwhile, the Black To The Future Action Fund poll conducted in December 2022 and released in March 2023 found that 44% of black voters thought about guns. control legislation should be a major focus for the Biden/Harris administration.

Even an April 2023 poll from Fox News, a outlet that normally pooh-poohs gun controlfound that a majority of voters he favored stricter gun limits over arming as a means of preventing gun violence.

Many of these demographics, of course, are among traditional Democratic districts. Lake said the issue of gun violence has the ability to link multiple factions within the party.

“It can reinforce our strategies of persuasion and our strategies of mobilization,” he said, and reinforce other political agendas of the party. “This can mobilize young people, it can mobilize African-Americans, and it can persuade Latino voters who are very concerned that their children will be shot at school. We can mobilize Asian American voters. There are so many constituencies this can reach.”

The Common Sense Gun Reform Consensus: specific policies, Like preventing people with mental illness from buying guns or expanding background checks, enjoy broad support, they can also complement or contrast with other big issues of voter concern, like abortion, crime, and inflation. Lake notes that it’s hard to rationalize why Sending abortion pills by mail is prohibited.but a box of 1,000 bales can be ordered online. And while crime remains a major concern for voters, it raises the question of how much crime overlaps with gun violence when 43% of US gun deaths are homicides.

Even issues that also seem to affect Americans across the board cannot match the weight of gun violence. “People think that everyone is affected by inflation,” Lake said. “But it’s not…inflation doesn’t take your life.”

The list of speakers at the Safer Communities Summit shows how gun control unites the Democratic coalition: Senator Chris Murphy, whose political roots lie in the upper-class western suburbs of Connecticut, will host the meeting . Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas, with roots on the city’s poor East Side, is one of the speakers.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a staunch progressive, speaks right before Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), a member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition and a favorite of moderate former New York City Mayor Michael. Bloomberg.

While gun control policies have been largely supported by Democrats, Republican politicians have resisted the new regulations, in the apparent fear of upsetting the vocal wing of the party that opposes gun regulations. Instead, after the shootings, Republicans they have been quick to call for investment in mental health.

That strategy has had consequences: a poll by the progressive group Navigator Research in April 2023, a report that includes the footnote that it was conducted entirely after a mass shooting and entirely before another shooting two weeks later, he found that Democrats, including Biden, were increased voter confidence in issues related to gun violence than the Republicans. Crucially, that difference included a prominent gap from independent voters, who trusted Democrats by an 18-point margin.

Still, in 2022, shortly after the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, the two sides were able to come together and pass the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most comprehensive gun control legislation passed in recent years. 30 years. . The invoice, Prepared by a bipartisan task force, it included investments in mental health and age restrictions on gun purchases, as well as funding for community interventions. Anyway, that Congress approved with the support of all Democrats, but only 30 Republicans: 14 in the House and 15 in the Senate. Two weeks after the bill was passed, Seven people died in a mass shooting at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Friday’s summit aims to highlight the legislation and its implementation.

“The sad thing is that sometimes nothing brings people together more than having something to respond to, some kind of tragedy,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action. , one of the advocacy groups leading Friday’s summit.

“Whether you come from a suburban area, you come from a more rural area, (or) you come from a big city. Even in those different spaces, we can still find common ground. And I think when we can also see evidence of our work with things like (what’s happening) in the states that are signing important bills into law, then people can feel a sense of community together.”

The victories have been a long time coming, he noted. “Starting this job, it really was difficult in many ways. One, because this was a third rail of politics and no one really wanted to talk about this when we thought about our leaders,” he said of the founding of Moms Demand Action in 2012, after the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 26 people, in his mostly children. “(In) the decade that we’ve been around, the wonderful thing is that it’s no longer a third rail of politics in the first place.”