Second Amendment a wedge issue? Not if both parties' nominees say the same thing about it

Jeff Soyer, at Alphecca, and Sebastian, at Snowflakes in Hell, have written intelligently about Jed Babbin's article in Human Events, called "The Second Amendment Wedge." Babbin's article is about District of Columbia v. Heller going to the Supreme Court as the biggest Second Amendment case in modern history, and doing so in the midst of a presidential election.

Babbin's point is that this is an issue which many Democrats have good reason to fear, and the issue's rising prominence has to be a cause for concern for them.

The Heller appeal will be argued next spring and unless something very odd happens, it will be decided before the election. This is very bad news for the Democrats who -- like Hillary -- don’t believe that the Second Amendment grants to private citizens the right to keep and bear arms.

If Hillary was scorched by the heat she took for her flip-flopping on the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, it would seem that she would have an even narrower line to walk (impossibly narrow, perhaps) in trying to reconcile her "common sense [gun] legislation," with an individual right of the people, that shall not be infringed.

However, as Jeff and Sebastian both point out, exploiting Clinton's weakness on gun rights issues will be impossible for the Republicans, if the best they can do for gun rights is Giuliani or Romney. From Alphecca:

Besides, if Giuliani or Romney win the nomination, their lack of credibility would make it a moot point in the national debate. Is there really a difference between their positions and that of Hillary’s or Obama’s? Nope. Gun control can only be a spot of contention if the two parties’ candidates disagree about it.

Some, of course, will dispute the assertion that Romney and Giuliani are largely indistinguishable from Clinton and Obama on Second Amendment rights issues. Babbin's article does a bit of that here:

One Republican -- Mitt Romney -- has spoken on this precise point. In his interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Romney said his personal view was that the Second Amendment granted the right to keep and bear arms to individuals.

The problem is that I (and, I suspect, quite a few others among the gun rights community) ain't buying it--Red's Trading Post does a good job of explaining why (also here). As for Rudy, I figure I've already made my opinion known (and don't forget this!). Romney and Giuliani might have managed to rewrite history enough to make their hostility to the Second Amendment less obvious than Obama's or Clinton's, but it still hardly takes a mind reader to know that gun owners cannot count on any help from those two.

District of Columbia v. Heller can help keep the Socialists out of the White House, but only if the Republican Party is smart enough to nominate a candidate who does not seem as enamored with Big Brother style total control as is the opposition.