I hope the story out of Washington is correct. I hope Colorado’s U.S. senators were, in fact, involved in some kind of winking or nodding or nose-pulling or high-signing or other double-secret shenanigans the other day.
I hope Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank had it right when he wrote that Mark Udall and Michael Bennet — whether in mid-nod or not — were actually willing to vote against the latest benighted National Rifle Association-inspired gun fantasy to hit the Senate floor if, it turned out, their votes were needed to beat the thing back.
I hope the implication is true: that the votes by Udall and Bennet were, first and last, politically motivated, a sop to those voters who think the Second Amendment always comes first.
You have to hope for at least that much. Because otherwise you’re left to draw only one conclusion: Udall and Bennet must have thought this proposal was actually a good thing for America.
And I, for one, want to think better of those we’ve elected/appointed to serve in the United States Senate.
The amendment, if you missed it, would have forced states with concealed-weapons laws — no matter how stringent — to recognize concealed-weapons permits from any state, no matter (for example) how close to Alabama the state is located.
Because many people apparently don’t want their laws to be written in Alabama, this would be a close vote, even though the NRA was pushing hard for passage.
According to Milbank, about 20 minutes after the voting had begun, Bennet and Udall came to the Senate floor and consulted with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who was counting the votes for Democrats. Schumer told Bennet — or so Milbank inferred — that the amendment was going down and that he was free to vote however he wished. Bennet looked to Udall, who nodded. That was the sign, I guess. And you know the rest.
They would be among 20 Democrats — most of them Western, most of them from red or purple states — who voted for the amendment, which got 58 votes, but needed 60 to pass.
This was the Democrats’ counterstrategy on guns: let vulnerable Democrats vote with the NRA but keep enough Democrats (and in this case two Republicans) in line to defeat the amendment.
It worked, and everyone was happy, or would have been, except, well, Milbank wrote that Udall and Bennet were willing to vote either way, suggesting that a political vote was — shockingly — a political vote.
Bennet, who has to actually run for his seat next year, denied the story, saying that he was always a “yes” vote. This is possible, I guess. It’s possible, too, that the explanations for the votes I heard from his office and Udall’s made sense.
The rationale could be boiled down to this: Because Colorado has had a similar concealed-weapons law since 2003— allowing reciprocity with 27 states, including Alaska, which apparently doesn’t do background checks — this new law would have little impact on Colorado. That much is clearly true. But, if there’s little impact, why vote for the bill?
It isn’t as if there’s some burden placed on people traveling to Colorado from non-reciprocity states. Here’s how the Colorado law works, at least as it was explained to me:
If you you’re driving through Colorado without a Colorado-recognized concealed-weapons permit, but with a registered weapon, you must remove said weapon from your undergarments, or wherever you’ve got it hidden, and put it, say, on the seat next to you. And that’s it: end of burden.
The real flaw in the Colorado law is that it allows reciprocity with any state that recognizes Colorado permit holders, no matter what standards those states use and how removed they are from Colorado standards. If Democrats in this state had any nerve, they’d try to get at least that part of the law changed.
But what Bennet and Udall did was to vote for a bill that would force all states to make the same mistake that Colorado made. It’s funny to watch liberal Democrats defending states’ rights here — and watch conservative Republicans pretending that states’ rights aren’t an issue.
We know what’s going on here. The gun people have the Democrats in a bind. It’s the one social issue that remains a loser for Democrats, no matter how many gun massacres we have or how many friends Dick Cheney accidentally shoots.
In recent years, the Democratic strategy had been to say nice things about the Second Amendment and then, whenever possible, avoid the issue. That stopped working when the NRA cleverly got its allies in Congress to start forcing Democrats to vote, which is how we got the law allowing concealed weapons in national parks, because, well, we need our guns hidden from bears and elk and also campers/desperadoes.
In that case, as far as I know, neither Udall or Bennet winked or nodded. But, with their votes, the bill passed.
So maybe this is progress.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
