Three months after the St. Valentine's Day massacre of 17 high school students and teachers in next-door Florida, Georgia has been presented with an OK Corral of a Republican primary for governor.
What we’re seeing goes far beyond the Second Amendment pledges in the GOP contest that saw Nathan Deal elected governor in 2010. If you’re a stranger in these here parts, you might think the five current contenders were running to be Wyatt Earp. Consider:
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle won an early endorsement from the National Rifle Association, after leading the legislative punishment of Delta Air Lines last March for dissing the gun group. In a subsequent interview, Cagle all but said that criticizing the NRA amounted to criticizing the Second Amendment.
In the same contest, another gun rights organization, the more strident GeorgiaCarry.org, on Monday endorsed Secretary of State Brian Kemp – who is attempting to force a primary runoff with Cagle with a TV ad that features two assault-style rifles, at least four pistols, and a double-barrel shotgun pointed in the direction of a young suitor to one of his daughters.
Shortly after the 19-year-old gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February, former state senator Hunter Hill, an ex-Army ranger also aiming for a primary runoff berth with Cagle, made what now must be considered the defining gaffe of the campaign.
Hill suggested that perhaps one should be 21 years old before one is allowed to purchase something with the high-powered killing capacity of an AR-15.
He quickly backtracked and endorsed “constitutional carry” for good measure, setting a new bar for the Republican gubernatorial nomination: Support for the right to legally carry a handgun, openly or concealed, without a license or permit.
Even so, “Navy Seal” Clay Tippins, a businessman running an outsider game in the race for governor, has accused Hill of Second Amendment treason.
If you're not a gun rights enthusiast, you might be asking this question right about now: How is this happening in Georgia, only weeks after events in Parkland? And the answer is simple: It's happening because of what happened in Parkland. Not despite.
Lord knows we’ve had our fill of mass shootings. But the nature of the victims made the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School different. Last week, the cartoonist Gary Trudeau concocted this Tweet on behalf of a “Doonesbury” character: “NRA caught bad break in Parkland. Shooter chose school full of informed, articulate, morally-driven social media sophisticates.”
These high school students did their mourning on cable TV news. They gave speeches and spear-headed marches that numbered in the hundreds of thousands. They flooded the state Capitol in Tallahassee with demands for stricter gun laws. The Florida legislature and Gov. Rick Scott responded — with a law that set the legal age for purchasing a firearm at 21.
For the first time, a chink had appeared in the NRA’s absolutist armor.
Among the many things that the 2016 presidential election taught us is that we are not the rational creatures we think we are. We do not collectively look at a fresh set of facts, coolly engage in argument, and then adjust our worldview to accommodate new conclusions.
When long-held, deep-rooted beliefs are challenged, we double down on them. We don't negotiate. This is what the NRA did. Last week, one of the more interesting facts to come out of Dallas, where the NRA held its annual meeting, was its assertion that a post-Feb. 14 outreach effort had signed up 500,000 new members, a 10 percent increase — if its earlier claim to 5 million members is accurate.
Likewise, gun enthusiasts in Georgia hunkered down — and like many groups that feel themselves under siege, began weeding out apostates.
Last month, a University of Georgia poll commissioned by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News found a GOP electorate that was essentially split down the middle. Forty-five percent of likely Republican primary voters wanted stricter rules covering the sale of firearms, while 46 percent want those rules to stay the same.
What polls often miss is the intensity behind these changing opinions. Republican voters who want stricter gun laws haven’t yet shown themselves willing to die on that hill. Gun rights devotees in the GOP have.
And the November general election, where changes in attitudes toward guns may matter, is still six months away.
Hunter Hill's brief February dalliance with the crazy thought that an 18-year-old shouldn't be able to buy an assault-style weapon, and large-capacity clips to go with it, is just one example of old patterns being reinforced. Accompanying the Monday endorsement of Brian Kemp by GeorgiaCarry.org was an "anti-endorsement" of Hill. "Sorry, but true Second Amendment supporters do not make those types of mistakes," the gun group stated on its website.
Another sign of a more intense climate: The only anti-gun measure before the Legislature with any traction this year was Senate Bill 99, a bill to stop the state from purging those involuntarily committed to mental health institutions from a national database that dealers use to identify those who should be allowed to purchase firearms. It failed on the last day of the session.
Then there was the interview that Cagle had with Doug Richards of WXIA in mid-April. Most of the attention went to the lieutenant governor’s stated reason for his opposition to banning military-style weapons like the AR-15. Farmers need them to bring down feral hogs, Cagle said.
But in the same interview, the lieutenant governor said he didn't support constitutional carry. And there was this line: "Georgia is in a very good position where our gun laws stand today," Cagle said, adding he knows of no areas where gun rights need to be expanded in the state.
In political circles governed by a post-Parkland backlash, that's not acceptable phrasing. A lengthy statement issued by his campaign manager followed days later. Cagle said he backed constitutional carry, but wanted an "effective process" to prevent convicted felons, people in the country illegally and mentally ill gun owners from carrying weapons.
John Monroe, vice president of GeorgiaCarry.org and the group’s attorney, said he didn’t put much stock in Cagle’s support for constitutional carry. He said he thinks Kemp the more sincere champion.
But such endorsements are not iron-clad. Kemp will have to improve his image. Believe it or not, Monroe had not seen the TV spot in which "Jake," the actor playing the young suitor, pledges to respect Kemp's daughters and appreciate the Second Amendment.
So I waited while Monroe reviewed it.
“My reaction is that it looks like he’s pointing a gun at the guy, which is a violation of one of the primary gun safety rules. You don’t point the muzzle of a gun at somebody,” Monroe said. “It’s mildly amusing.”
And in this contest, you have to take your humor where you find it.
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