Eric M. thinks that, short of nominating Bloomberg, liberal and moderate gun owners could be persuaded to vote for someone other than Trump.
If it’s Bloomberg, I can almost guarantee that a large chunk of [Democrat and independent gun owners] will either vote for Trump or vote third party. And no, berating them will not work, nor is it helpful. He’s awful for a variety of reasons in addition to the gun conversation, and would likely lose support from both gun owners and non-gun owning minorities who have witnessed his horrific policies in NY.
The other candidates? Look, what doesn’t get done in the first 100 days is likely to wither on the vine without large bipartisan support. Pragmatically, if the candidate has released a plan for the first 100 days that is focused on other stuff, more gun owners are going to, perhaps, jump on board. As most of the folks we’re discussing don’t just disapprove of Trump, they vehemently dislike the way he’s governing and what he’s done to this country.
And if you give them enough to be excited about, with policies that can really make a difference to folks who haven’t been “winning” for the last 40+ years of Reaganomics, the election is winnable. And if you took a hard look at the policies that all the Dems have signed off on about guns this time around, then go read about real root cause mitigation, and decided to roll out some policies along those lines instead, you’d not only win gun owners, you’d make a real difference.
– Eric M. in The 2020 Election and the Impact of Gun Owners