It should not be surprising that NPR added their snarky commentary into the article:
Well, it is a scary world. And voters are looking for can-do leaders who can solve complex problems easily. But there is the question of whether a parade of politicians pictured with guns makes us feel safer, or even more frightened.I do think the article misses the mark in trying to compare what is happening in races this year on both the Republican and Democratic side as it relates to firearms by attempting to compare it to 1994. That year, a Democratically controlled Congress and White House had just enacted the Clinton Gun Ban. Voters were not treated so much to a bi-partisan display of support for the Second Amendment as you see this year. What is also different I believe is the actual use of firearms by candidates. We all also remember the photo-ops of John Kerry in 2004 where he tried to appear like the average gun owner on a clay target range and in the goose blind (though you never saw him actually doing the hunting - just entering and leaving the field).
It is up to gun owners to discern whether all of this is just for show or whether it shows a genuine understanding of the issue. There are a lot of candidates that support gun control but try to parse the issue by saying they don't want to take any hunter's shotgun. It is however a positive sign when you have candidates of both parities going after the votes of gun owners.
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It's a positive sign indeed. And there are a lot of candidates that try to parse the issue, with stupid talking points like "I support the Second Amendment." Perhaps we can know them by their guns. Kerry photo-ops with a shotgun lets us know he supports that other Second Amendment, the one that has to do with hunting and not the actual one in the Bill of Rights. But Pam Gorman is the real deal -- a full-auto Tommy gun isn't for hunting.
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