Presidential and Ohio’s U.S. senate races highlight stark political divisions over guns

This year the gun debate continues in the races for president and Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat. Local political scientists say gun law is not dominating those campaigns but the election could impact gun policy depending on which party controls the presidency and Congress.

“Structurally if you have divided government or if Republicans win the House and the Senate there is nothing that will happen,” said Daniel Birdsong, senior lecturer in University of Dayton political science department.

“If you have united government for the Democrats you might see something come out of that, but the Senate is a tricky place because you have to have 60 votes to get something through. Without that margin you are stuck with no legislation.”

Whoever becomes president would have the opportunity to replace justices who leave the Supreme Court, which became more conservative after former President Donald Trump replaced three justices during his term.

Right now voters seem most focused on the candidates’ positions on the economy and immigration, the experts said.

“The public wants changes (in gun policy) but it’s an issue that is not the top issue,” Birdsong said. “If there’s a mass shooting it might spike with its importance, but then it drifts off because people are more concerned in their day-to-day.”

Fifty-six percent of U.S. adults say gun laws should be more strict, according to a Gallup Poll survey released in October. The survey found 31% believe guns laws should remain as they are and 12% want less strict gun laws, according to Gallup.

“Majorities have consistently favored stricter gun laws since 2015, with notable spikes in that view after prominent shootings such as in Uvalde (in 2022) and Parkland, Florida, in 2018,” according to Gallup.

The political divide over guns, with many Republicans opposing gun restrictions on Second Amendment grounds and many Democrats calling for restrictions to reduce gun violence, “is baked into the electorate. It’s part of the culture war,” said Mark Caleb Smith, director of Cedarville University’s Center for Political Studies.

Gun rights supporters in the Republican base have a powerful influence on elected officials, said Lee Hannah, professor of political science at Wright State University.

“I think even when they see a topline opinion that says most people want background checks, most people want limitations on who can own some of these firearms, even in light of all that, your Republican elected politician knows that while people hold that opinion, the people who hold the real strong opinions, the people who vote in primaries and the people who call their member of Congress are the avid gun rights enthusiasts,” Hannah said.

Even the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 by a man armed with an AR15-style semiautomatic rifle did not change the debate, Smith said. One man was killed and Trump and two other people were injured in a few seconds of firing from a rooftop by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Pennsylvania, who was shot to death by Secret Service personnel.

“I just don’t see it affecting it that much. Which is shocking to think,” Smith said. “You have a presidential candidate nearly killed and it just hasn’t moved the needle on this issue.”

The candidates in Ohio

The major party candidates in the presidential race are Trump, a Republican, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat who replaced President Joe Biden as the nominee after he dropped out in July.

The U.S. Senate race pits U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, against Bernie Moreno, a Republican businessman from Westlake. It is one of the hottest senate races in the country as Republicans seek to reverse Democrats’ current narrow Senate majority.

Moreno’s campaign website lists 16 priorities, including, “Vigorously defend our constitutional rights, especially the Second Amendment,” but it makes no further mention of gun policy.

When asked for more details on his position, campaign spokeswoman Reagan McCarthy told this news outlet, “In the Senate, Bernie will always stand up for our Second Amendment rights. This election comes down to a choice between someone who will protect our rights, and Sherrod Brown, who has repeatedly voted to infringe on them.”

In 2022, with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, Brown voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was the first major gun violence prevention legislation that had passed in nearly three decades.

“Five years after we lost nine Ohioans in a mass shooting in Dayton, the gun lobby continues to block action to keep our kids and communities safe,” Brown said to this news outlet. “I continue to push for action that will balance Ohioans’ Constitutional rights with the need to protect our communities from senseless gun violence.”

After the Aug. 4, 2019 Dayton shooting, which killed nine people and injured more than two dozen others in the Oregon District, Brown joined then-Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley in calling for then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to allow a vote on universal background check legislation.

“We need to get weapons of war off of our streets and vote immediately on commonsense background checks that the House of Representatives already passed,” Brown said in a news release issued after the Dayton shooting. “We can’t do that until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls a vote and stops working for the NRA, and starts working to keep our communities safe. People don’t have to keep dying and we have the power to stop it. This isn’t a Republican issue or a Democratic issue, this is about keeping America safe.”

The background check proposal did not advance to a vote, according to Congressional records.

Brown also co-sponsored the Automatic Gun Fire Prevention Act, introduced days after the Oct. 2017 Las Vegas shooting that left 60 people dead and hundreds injured after a man opened fire on the crowd at a music festival using rifles equipped with bump stocks.

The bill would have banned the bump stock, which is an accessory that allows a semiautomatic rifle to fire more rapidly, like an automatic machine gun, but the bill did not advance to a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Trump and Harris

In 2018 while Trump was president the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives banned bump stocks, but on June 14 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban, ruling that it overstepped statutory authority. The court ruling left open the possibility that Congress could act to ban bump stocks. On June 18 a Democratic effort to ban them by unanimous consent failed after a Republican senator objected.

Trump’s, whose running mate is Middletown native U.S. Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, pledges support for the Second Amendment on their campaign website and touts the U.S. Supreme Court Justices he appointed during his 2017-2020 term in office.

“President Trump’s three appointees delivered the biggest win for life in a generation in overturning Roe v. Wade and expanded the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” the website says. “He will also always defend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and uphold your religious liberty, including the Constitutional right to pray in public schools.”

Vice President Harris heads the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which partners with cities and states to help reduce gun violence and assists with implementing the safer communities act, according to a White House news release.

Her campaign website touts passage of the safer communities act and notes that her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is a hunter and supporter of the Second Amendment who “like millions of gun owners, believes that Congress must do more to tackle gun violence in our communities.”

“We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws,” Harris said in an Aug. 7 Detroit campaign rally speech.

Gun legislation

Efforts to pass major gun law restrictions in Congress failed repeatedly in the years since the 1994 federal assault weapons ban was approved and then expired in 2004. Expiration of the law allowed consumers to buy the AR-style and AK-style semiautomatic rifles commonly called assault weapons that have been used in many mass shootings, and the large capacity magazines that hold ammunition for those guns.

In June 2022 Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was approved and signed by President Joe Biden the month after mass shootings at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school and a Buffalo, NY grocery store.

The new law:

Democrats only gained enough Republican votes to pass the law by not including universal background checks for all gun purchases, a ban on anyone under 21 purchasing a semiautomatic weapon or a ban on the sale of large-capacity magazines, The New York Times reported.

Democratic efforts to reinstate a ban on assault weapons also failed to gain traction since the original ban expired.

Over the years the National Rife Association held powerful sway on gun policy, thwarting gun restrictions using its large membership, money, and grading system to reward candidates and members of Congress for supporting gun rights and to punish those who supported limits on guns.

The group has been diminished by its own internal and financial problems, declining membership and a February verdict in a state of New York lawsuit that found the non-profit group and its leaders engaged in financial misconduct.

“In some ways they may not have much influence as an organization, but their ideas have been so influential within the Republican Party that it doesn’t really matter,” Smith said.

Smith said it is possible Congressional and state legislative gun legislation could pass muster with the Supreme Court, even with the conservative majority that overturned the bump stock ban and expanded Second Amendment rights with it’s 2022 New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling overturning New York state’s concealed-carry law. In another ruling, U.S. v. Rahimi, the court in June upheld a federal law banning gun possession by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

“I think a majority of the court has seemed to indicate that they would be OK with regulating things like magazine capacity, they would be OK with regulating background checks and they would be OK with regulating certain kinds of weapons even, to a point,” Smith said.

Hannah said any effort to ban assault weapons would face a huge logistical challenge: the sheer number of assault weapons that have been manufactured and sold in the U.S.

Nearly 20 million of these guns are in circulation, according to a 2020 report based on federal data and released by NSSF, the firearm industry trade association, which calls them “modern sporting rifles” and opposes the use of the term “assault rifle.”

“They’re so prevalent that it does become very difficult,” Hannah said. “All the buyback programs in the world, all the restrictions even moving forward won’t change the fact that millions of these are in circulation and that does make it a really intractable problem here.”

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