Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden should “stick to his guns” and favor sensible gun control measures, says columnist Roger Simon of Politico.com Last summer, Biden was asked about the issue in a candidate debate in Charleston, S.C. A Michigan man, speaking by video picked up what appeared to be a semiautomatic assaut rifle and said “Americans really want to know if our babies are safe.”
Simon notes that the Democrats have been quaking in their boots over the gun issue ever since Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000. Had Gore won Tennessee, Arkansas, or West Virginia – all winnable states – he would not have had to win Florida and he would have become president. He lost all those states, and guns had a lot to do with it. Biden’s answer to the gun owner was this: “I'll tell you what, if that is his baby, he needs help. I don't know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun.” Biden went on to say that “we should be working with law enforcement, right now, to make sure that we protect people against people who are not capable of knowing what to do with a gun because they're either mentally imbalanced and/or because they have a criminal record.” Said Simon: “It was a tough, honest answer that did not play to the crowd.”