The Jim Webb Gun Controversy

Washington, DC (TLS). U.S. Senator Jim Webb, D-Virginia, finds himself embroiled in a controversy involving firearms and a top personal aide. The aide was arrested by Capitol police for bringing a concealed handgun into the Senate office complex.

Upon his arrest, the aide claimed that Senator Webb had given him the weapon and that it belonged to Webb. Webb has permission to carry a concealed handgun into his office.

Wasting no time in going before the cameras, Webb held a brief news conference during which he denied giving the gun to the aide.

This controversy has raised several interesting, key issues revolving around the national debate on the right to carry, the D.C. law banning guns (which was recently declared unconstitutional by a federal court), and the problem with politicians such as Jim Webb.

Webb ran as one of the so-called 'blue dog Democrats,' who openly defied their Party's leadership by embracing conservative issues such as gun rights. Once elected, even Nancy Pelosi, the quintessential socialist of the People's Republic of California, embraced these conservatives, stating that they would not be pressured to vote for any issue that their constituents back home deplore. On the Senate side, Harry Reid echoed Pelosi's sentiments.

Yet no sooner had Pelosi and Reid took the gavel to open the session of the new Congress than the inexperienced freshman Democrats with a conservative bent found themselves totally overwhelmed by the 'big guns' of the Democrat Liberal Establishment. Bills were introduced to silence free speech. Another bill was introduced to scale back Second Amendment rights (this one, H.R. 1022, now has nearly 40 sponsors).

The 'blue dogs' suddenly found themselves under heavy peer-pressure. After all, how can a first-term conservative Senator from a largely rural state find the intestinal fortitude to go head-to-head with one of the Party's perennial stars, such as Ted 'Senator Blowhard' Kennedy?

The huffing and puffing of Senator Blowhard is enough to send inexperienced freshmen Democrats scurrying for cover.

So here is Jim Webb facing the cameras with the dilemma of his life. He clearly has a much more conservative viewpoint on the Second Amendment than most of his Democrat colleagues. Yet his top aide has been arrested for committing the unpardonable sin as far as some in his Party are concerned--he brought one of those evil, concealed weapons right into the Capitol!

Webb has yet to strongly defend the actions of his aide. Yet he has not condemned him, either. Walking this tightrope is the curse of being a conservative in a Party run by extremist Liberals and who get most of their money from those who are even MORE extremist than they are.

The flip side of this controversy has to do with the reaction, or lack thereof, by the Senate leadership.

Suppose this had been Trent Lott's aide. Or Orin Hatch.

I can just hear it now. The Democrats would have hit the airwaves that very day to condemn the practice and use it to showcase why we need more gun control in the United States of America. There would be calls for endless investigations into the incident, including why the top aide of a top Republican Senator would be bringing a concealed weapon into the Senate (probably even hinting that since Senator Lott and Hatch are religious conservatives, they were probably part of an evil fundamentalist Christian terrorist plot to blow up the Senate office building).

But because this is DEMOCRAT Jim Webb, what have we heard from the Senate leadership about this incident? Nary word.

And we won't.

The Democrats can ill-afford to further alienate that part of the voting base that values the Second Amendment yet holds a vague distrust for Republicans, and they can ill-afford to rattle a freshman Senator who hold a seat they sorely need to keep and who tends to blow his stack at the drop of a hat.

It is to be remembered that Webb has a penchant for volatility. This is the same man who refused to shake President Bush's hand in a serving line at a White House reception given in honor of the newly elected Congressmen. Set this guy off, and the Dems are likely to be the recipients of a stream of projectile venom aimed straight at the Party leadership.

Why, he may even whip out his gun.

The bottom line is that the blue dogs are in a precarious position in a Party that is clearly out of touch with most Americans. But they are not dumb. As much as the Democrat leadership despises the right of the people to keep and bear arms, they dare not make an issue out of Webb and his aide's views on guns.

Webb could help himself by coming clean about all of this. Let the country know that he backs his aide's right to carry. Let the country know that he backs Second Amendment rights, and that he finds the law banning guns in D.C. to be a travesty and a sham...particularly when one must break the law in bringing a gun through D.C. in order to legally hold it in the Senate office complex.

How much sense does that make?

Webb could do himself and all freedom-loving Americans a big favor by living up to the way he portrayed himself during the campaign. The problem is he would immediately become a pariah in his own Party, and frankly, I don't think he has the guts to do it.