Democrats’ Unprecedented Embrace of Gun Control
The party is betting that support for restrictions is more likely to attract moderate voters than turn them off.
On a cold February evening, weeks before the full force of the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, a few dozen Mike Bloomberg supporters milled around the airy living room of a home in the genteel Washington, D.C., suburb of McLean, Virginia. The voters, most of them white, described themselves as moderates or former Republicans. They explained to me that, more than anything, they want stability and civility back in national politics, and they tut-tutted any mention of Bernie Sanders and his plans for radical change. But one issue—the one they’d come to hear about—got them really riled up: gun control.
“He’s laid out an assault-weapons ban for new purchases,” a
