“When people are feeling insecure,” former president Bill Clinton said as he explained his party’s loss in the 2002 midterm elections, “they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.”
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
“Strong and wrong” is right in the Republican wheelhouse, which is why they’ve enthusiastically elevated crime in this year’s elections. Debate on this topic consists mostly of Republicans saying “Those Democrats want to defund the police!” and Democrats responding “No, we don’t!”
But some Democrats might finally be figuring things out. At a debate of Florida Senate contenders on Tuesday, Rep. Val Demings (D) blasted Sen. Marco Rubio (R) for backtracking on his prior support for raising the age cutoff for buying military-style rifles, saying, “How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school, college, church, synagogue, a grocery store, a movie theater, a mall and a nightclub — and do nothing?”
More pointedly, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams directly linked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s gun policies to the recent increase in crime in their Monday debate. After Kemp tossed the expected “defund the police” attack at Abrams, she responded that Kemp “has weakened gun laws in this state, flooded our streets with guns by letting dangerous people get access to these weapons.”
Follow Paul Waldman's opinionsFollow
Naturally, Kemp dismisses the idea that more guns on the street could have any effect on crime. He insisted that people are out buying guns “because the criminals are the only ones that do have the guns.”
Which is a rather odd thing to claim, given the reality of Georgia gun laws. Before Kemp was elected four years ago the state had some of the loosest laws in the country, and Kemp has made them looser still. Most notably, earlier this year he signed a law providing for permitless concealed carry, meaning anyone can carry a gun in public without any license or training.
In Georgia, as in many places, some kinds of crime increased in 2020, especially homicide. But it wasn’t because any police were defunded there. In Atlanta, the state’s largest city, city councilors considered but ultimately rejected a cut in the police budget in 2020, then increased it in 2021 and increased it again in 2022. Yet homicides rose in 2020 and rose again in 2021.
That makes Georgia no different than much of the country: In red states and blue states, cities and rural areas, certain kinds of crime rose when the pandemic hit, especially homicides (which happen to be highest in states run by Republicans).
What else increased? Gun sales. As in most states, gun sales shot up in Georgia along with the pandemic. Nationally, the FBI background check system (which does not cover private sales and unlicensed sellers) recorded nearly 28.4 million gun sales in 2019 and nearly 39.7 million in 2020, an increase of nearly 40 percent.
Yet to watch the debate about crime you would think crime can only be explained by liberal policies imposed from somewhere or other, even in the most Republican places.
Jen Jordan, the Democratic nominee for attorney general in Georgia, is also facing such attacks. In a debate Tuesday, incumbent Republican Christopher M. Carr insisted crime had risen in her state senate district. When Jordan noted that crime had gone up all across Georgia, a state run from top to bottom by Republicans, Carr scoffed, “The people of Georgia find it humorous to hear a Democrat blame a Republican for crime,” as though that was self-evidently ridiculous; crime can only be Democrats’ fault, even when Republicans are in charge.
When I asked Jordan about this, she was still a little stunned. “How in the world am I to blame for your failures?” she said of Republicans. “But that’s what they’re used to doing.”
When I asked what she believes explains the increase in crime since 2020, she replied, “Access to guns, the proliferation of guns everywhere, and the policy decisions that were made by those in power.” She added, “The crime rate that’s going up is gun violence.”
Only here and there around the country do we see Democrats attacking Republicans this way. It’s as though they’re stuck in a defensive crouch, gripped by the fear that the best they can do is either avoid the subject or claim they’ll be “tough” in the same ways Republicans are.
Yet Democrats have the public on their side. That permitless concealed carry law Kemp signed? A poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed Georgians opposing it by a margin of 70 to 28.
The causes of the increase in crime that began in 2020 are complex and not yet fully understood. But the dramatic increase in guns circulating through the country is a far more plausible contributor than the policies of a few progressive prosecutors in a few cities, let alone a “defunding” that never actually happened.
Which suggests at the very least that Democrats are letting Republicans off the hook for their determination to increase gun proliferation at the very moment when voters could be receptive to arguments linking guns and crime. Voters may prefer strong and wrong to weak and right, but if you could be strong and right, then you might really get somewhere.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
“Strong and wrong” is right in the Republican wheelhouse, which is why they’ve enthusiastically elevated crime in this year’s elections. Debate on this topic consists mostly of Republicans saying “Those Democrats want to defund the police!” and Democrats responding “No, we don’t!”
But some Democrats might finally be figuring things out. At a debate of Florida Senate contenders on Tuesday, Rep. Val Demings (D) blasted Sen. Marco Rubio (R) for backtracking on his prior support for raising the age cutoff for buying military-style rifles, saying, “How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school, college, church, synagogue, a grocery store, a movie theater, a mall and a nightclub — and do nothing?”
More pointedly, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams directly linked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s gun policies to the recent increase in crime in their Monday debate. After Kemp tossed the expected “defund the police” attack at Abrams, she responded that Kemp “has weakened gun laws in this state, flooded our streets with guns by letting dangerous people get access to these weapons.”
Follow Paul Waldman's opinionsFollow
Naturally, Kemp dismisses the idea that more guns on the street could have any effect on crime. He insisted that people are out buying guns “because the criminals are the only ones that do have the guns.”
Which is a rather odd thing to claim, given the reality of Georgia gun laws. Before Kemp was elected four years ago the state had some of the loosest laws in the country, and Kemp has made them looser still. Most notably, earlier this year he signed a law providing for permitless concealed carry, meaning anyone can carry a gun in public without any license or training.
In Georgia, as in many places, some kinds of crime increased in 2020, especially homicide. But it wasn’t because any police were defunded there. In Atlanta, the state’s largest city, city councilors considered but ultimately rejected a cut in the police budget in 2020, then increased it in 2021 and increased it again in 2022. Yet homicides rose in 2020 and rose again in 2021.
That makes Georgia no different than much of the country: In red states and blue states, cities and rural areas, certain kinds of crime rose when the pandemic hit, especially homicides (which happen to be highest in states run by Republicans).
What else increased? Gun sales. As in most states, gun sales shot up in Georgia along with the pandemic. Nationally, the FBI background check system (which does not cover private sales and unlicensed sellers) recorded nearly 28.4 million gun sales in 2019 and nearly 39.7 million in 2020, an increase of nearly 40 percent.
Yet to watch the debate about crime you would think crime can only be explained by liberal policies imposed from somewhere or other, even in the most Republican places.
Jen Jordan, the Democratic nominee for attorney general in Georgia, is also facing such attacks. In a debate Tuesday, incumbent Republican Christopher M. Carr insisted crime had risen in her state senate district. When Jordan noted that crime had gone up all across Georgia, a state run from top to bottom by Republicans, Carr scoffed, “The people of Georgia find it humorous to hear a Democrat blame a Republican for crime,” as though that was self-evidently ridiculous; crime can only be Democrats’ fault, even when Republicans are in charge.
When I asked Jordan about this, she was still a little stunned. “How in the world am I to blame for your failures?” she said of Republicans. “But that’s what they’re used to doing.”
When I asked what she believes explains the increase in crime since 2020, she replied, “Access to guns, the proliferation of guns everywhere, and the policy decisions that were made by those in power.” She added, “The crime rate that’s going up is gun violence.”
Only here and there around the country do we see Democrats attacking Republicans this way. It’s as though they’re stuck in a defensive crouch, gripped by the fear that the best they can do is either avoid the subject or claim they’ll be “tough” in the same ways Republicans are.
Yet Democrats have the public on their side. That permitless concealed carry law Kemp signed? A poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed Georgians opposing it by a margin of 70 to 28.
The causes of the increase in crime that began in 2020 are complex and not yet fully understood. But the dramatic increase in guns circulating through the country is a far more plausible contributor than the policies of a few progressive prosecutors in a few cities, let alone a “defunding” that never actually happened.
Which suggests at the very least that Democrats are letting Republicans off the hook for their determination to increase gun proliferation at the very moment when voters could be receptive to arguments linking guns and crime. Voters may prefer strong and wrong to weak and right, but if you could be strong and right, then you might really get somewhere.
