Today will be the last day we’ll be saying “President Bush”, and it’s been a long eight years. While I am not happy with the result of the election of 2008, in a lot of ways, I’m happy to put George W. Bush behind us. Not having voted for him in 2000 (or Al Gore for that matter), I was never his biggest fan. But I always supported him on the decision to invade Iraq, and I still support it. The future success of Iraq and the Arab world will be the yard stick by which his administration’s success is measured.
For a coalition that deserves a lot of credit for getting him elected twice, Bush never treated the gun rights community with the respect I think we deserved. Nonetheless, I think the state of gun rights over the eight years of Bush is one of continued improvement. Bush came into office arguing for renewing the Assault Weapons Ban.  It never happened. We passed or expanded right-to-carry in several states. We got the National Park rule on concealed carry changed (for how long remains to be seen). We ended the continual threat of lawsuits that threatened to bankrupt gun makers. We got Heller, despite Bush’s Solicitor General’s best effort to scuttle it. And despite noise on our side that Heller is worthless, it’s already toppled more gun bans in the few months that it’s been in effect than we could ever have hoped to accomplish legislatively in a decades long campaign.
While Bush was no great friend to gun rights, nor was he a great enemy. By not using the bully pulpit to beat the drum for greater gun control, he allowed us to make some cultural progress on the topic of guns. Both 9/11 and Katrina probably helped facilitate that a great deal. But I don’t think it can be denied that it’s far better to have a half-hearted friend in the White House than an avowed enemy.
It remains to be seen yet how much political capital Barack Obama is going to be willing to gamble on the topic of guns. Clinton gambled a great deal on it over his entire presidency. I’m both comforted and terrified that Barack Obama seems a good deal politically smarter than Clinton. Comforted that he probably understands he would burn signficant political capital fighting a contentious culture war issue, but terrified because in his heart he is an avowed enemy of civilian gun ownership. Bill Clinton, when it came to gun control, was a backgammon player. Obama will be a chess player. The latter has the potential to be more dangerous played over the long run.
