An article in The Washington Post today points out that the leading Democratic Presidential candidates are shying away from tough gun control, preferring instead to talk of enforcing existing laws or even leaving gun control laws to the states. None are calling for the licensing of new handgun owners, as Al Gore did in 2000..

The reason is obvious. The gun control issue is credited with driving white working class voters away from the Democratic party in key states in 2000 and Democrats want to avoid a repeat in 2004.

Of course, the role gun control, per se, played in Democratic losses in 2000 can easily be exaggerated; for example, Gore lost West Virginia in 2000 at least as much because of issues around the coal industry and environmental regulation as because of guns. Still and all, it’s hard to argue the gun issue wasn’t a contributing factor in alienating many gun-owning, working class voters from the Democrats.

So here’s the latest idea: gun safety. Instead of framing the issue as gun control, which implicitly sets up a confrontation with gun rights, many are now arguing that a better frame is “gun safety”–the idea that with gun rights come gun responsibilities to ensure their safe use and keep them out of the hands of criminals and children.

Sounds good to DR. But would the gun safety approach work? Some empirical backing for the approach is provided by a recent Penn Schoen and Berland poll on the gun issue. The poll suggests that Democrats who use a gun safety approach can advocate moderate gun regulation and be much better received than they would be if they were viewed as a typical gun control Democrat.

One need not endorse all the many findings of the poll, which, like most PSB polls, has an air of runaway advocacy a good deal of the time, to believe this general finding is credible. Democrats need all the help they can get among white working class voters in swing states and gun safety could make a solid contribution toward making Democrats more marketable to these voters.