Did the Assault Weapons Ban affect the results of the 1996 election?

[darklordoftech]

In 1994, Congress, controlled by the Democrats, passed the Assault Weapons Ban, and Clinton signed it into law. Did this affect the results of the 1996 election the way gun issues affect elections today?

[SingingAnalyst]

In 1994, Congress, controlled by the Democrats, passed the Assault Weapons Ban, and Clinton signed it into law. Did this affect the results of the 1996 election the way gun issues affect elections today?

I voted No, but it may have affected it slightly; it probably bumped up Dole's percentage somewhat in the rural parts of CO, ID, and WY, who had given very lukewarm support to Bush 4 years earlier.

Clinton won primarily because (1) he was seen as a centrist; in particular working with Newt Gingrich on welfare reform; and (2) because violent crime, so much on the minds of Americans from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, was finally starting to decline-- significantly. The election of 1996 was arguably the first election since 1960 that the crime issue didn't hurt Democrats.

[kcguy]

Based on my memory, I'm going to say "No", too.

I know it ended the career of one House Republican (Frisa's loss to McCarthy on Long Island), but I don't remember it being much of an issue anywhere else.  The Interior West had been already lost to the Democrats on issues related to environmentalism and federal land management, and the South's slow drift away didn't seem to be particularly tied to guns.

It was more the 2000 election where guns seemed to become a prominent issue, although the assumption of the national media before Election Day (Katie Couric, in particular, comes to mind) was that guns were a losing issue for Bush, rather than Gore.

[libertpaulian]

It arguably cost Clinton Georgia, but that's about it, really.