The Gun Issue Invited In
Like many Alaskans, Gov. Sarah Palin is a lifelong hunter and strong proponent of Second Amendment rights. A longtime member of the National Rifle Association, she told USA Today when she was running for governor as a Republican in 2006 that “We hunt as much as we can, and I’m proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska.” Her own parents had just returned from hunting caribou when they learned that she had been tapped as Sen. John McCain’s running mate.
Most Alaskans wouldn’t bat an eye at such a lifestyle. (Palin’s favorite food? “Moose stew after a day of snowmachining,” she told Vogue.) But in selecting a pro-gun female running mate who can probably skin and process a deer, Sen. John McCain may be inviting a debate on gun control into the campaign—and he could be seen as extending an olive branch to the wary right wing of his party: a recent independently-produced video clip by a Palin supporter included footage of her firing an assault rifle with Alaska National Guard soldiers. Such imagery stands in contrast to Sen. Barack Obama, who, in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination yesterday, said assault weapons pose a threat to city’s streets. “The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland,” he said, “but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.”
