On Guns and the Politics of Perception

A famous saying is that Social Security is the "third rail" of American politics (touch it and die), but there's a case to be made that gun control is an even more dangerous issue.Democrats, who during the early 1990s embraced efforts to restrict access to guns to their electoral detriment, have largely abandoned that cause over the last few election cycles -- an acknowledgment that many Americans in rural and exurban congressional districts value their right to bear arms and have little interest in ceding that right, no matter how artfully the issue is attached to getting tough on crime.

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