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Sen. Harry Reid shoots his personal 12-gauge shotgun during the grand opening of the Clark County Shooting Park in Las Vegas Saturday, March 27, 2010.
By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Friday, Dec. 28, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Sun coverage
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a gun man, always has been.
And although the Nevada native has welcomed the call by President Barack Obama to respond to the Newtown, Conn., massacre with action, Reid has yet to endorse — or even utter the phrase — “gun control.”
Obama expects Reid to get the gun control legislation he’ll announce in January through Congress. Polls show a majority of Americans want Congress to act to regulate firearms after the Dec. 14 killings of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
But before Reid can whip up votes on measures to scale back access to guns, he has to wrestle with the issue himself.
“He’s a gun guy,” one of Reid’s closest confidants said. “But I think he recognizes that times have changed.”
Reid said he grew up with a gun in his hands.
“Growing up as I did in Searchlight, we didn’t go on vacations, we didn’t do things I guess a lot of other people around the country did ... but I can remember all four Reid brothers, we took a ride out to Paiute Springs and we shot doves,” Reid told a Nevada audience at a 2010 ribbon-cutting for a shooting range he had secured federal funds to build. “We had such a wonderful, wonderful time. ... People who criticize this probably would criticize baseball or football or soccer.”
Reid’s childhood shooting birds for sport and hunting jackrabbits his grandmother used in stew is a common narrative among Westerners.
Sen. Harry Reid prepares to shoot his personal 12-gauge shotgun during the grand opening of the Clark County Shooting Park in Las Vegas Saturday, March 27, 2010.
Guns played an important and recurring role in his adult life, too. Reid carried a gun for work as a Capitol Police officer while he was in law school. He carried a gun for protection while he was chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission and while working as a prosecutor trying to put mob bosses behind bars.
Guns, their role in everyday life and the extent to which that right is protected by the Second Amendment were matters Reid simply didn’t question, according to those who worked with him — not after Columbine; not when the assault weapons ban expired (he’d voted against it); and not after Virginia Tech, the country’s deadliest single-shooter assault, happened in the first year of his majority leadership in the Senate.
“I haven’t seen him spend a lot of time wrestling with this issue over the years,” said a former aide who was close with Reid. “In years past he’s largely ended up toeing the NRA line. But I’m not convinced that’s going to happen this time.”
Twenty dead 6- and 7-year-olds, killed by a high-capacity semiautomatic rifle, are making many lawmakers who never thought twice about gun laws revisit the issue.
Adam Lanza, 20, went to the school after having shot his mother to death at her home. At the school, he killed 20 first-graders and six of the women who taught them before turning his guns on himself.
As the stunned New England town has buried its dead in the days since, some lawmakers in Washington have, for the first time, called for a conversation about gun control.
The shift started with long-silent supporters such as the president, who said he believed in gun control during his 2008 campaign but has eschewed any official conversation about it while in office.
“A majority of Americans support banning the sale of military-style assault weapons. A majority of Americans support banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips. A majority of Americans support a law requiring background checks before all gun purchases so that criminals can’t take advantage of legal loopholes,” Obama said just days after the killings. “I urge the new Congress to hold votes on these measures next year in a timely manner.”
But voices for gun control also included avid hunters and National Rifle Association members, such as Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat.
“I’m a proud outdoorsman and huntsman, like many Americans, and I like shooting, but this doesn’t make sense,” Manchin told MSNBC. “I don’t know anyone in the sporting and hunting arena who goes out with an assault rifle; I don’t know anyone who needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting.”
Even where staunchly pro-gun lawmakers have refused to support regulation, something unusual is happening: public distancing from the NRA, which has called for placing armed guards in schools in response to Newtown.
Reid has maintained a mixed relationship with the NRA, the gun industry’s strong lobbying arm that wields considerable influence in Washington through generous campaign donations and ideological appeals.
Reid has maintained a “B” average NRA rating, pretty high for a Democrat, and although he has never received the NRA’s endorsement in a Senate race, he usually receives its money — even rarer for a Democrat.
Reid voted against the assault weapons ban; applauded the Supreme Court’s recent pro-gun decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago; and worked closely with the NRA to promote gun sports, such as securing federal funding for the Clark County Shooting Range.
But Reid hasn’t drawn a hard line in the sand on gun control like other advocates: He worked hard to promote Obama’s nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court despite the fact that both thought the Second Amendment allowed for greater regulation of guns than Reid. Reid also is waging a one-man fight for the federal court nomination of Elissa Cadish, whom Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller has prevented from being considered because he takes issue with her written opinions about gun control and the Second Amendment.
Reid also staunchly supports Obama’s call to move toward a comprehensive response to recent mass shootings in Newtown; Portland, Ore.; Aurora, Colo.; and Oak Creek, Wis., that includes gun control, but he has resisted invitations to express his opinion on any changes in firearm regulation.
His office turned down a request to interview Reid for this article and did not respond to questions about Reid’s stance or current relationship to guns — not even to clarify how many he owns, whether he keeps any in D.C. and how often he shoots.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., speaks with reporters following a Democratic strategy session at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012.
But former aides said there’s a reason for all the hush-hush.
“Reid’s got a responsibility as a majority leader to not get ahead of the (Senate Democratic) caucus,” a close former aide said. “It doesn’t mean that he can’t change, but he’s got to do it more carefully than most.”
Reid has many Democratic colleagues with pro-gun records and “A” ratings from the NRA. Among them are at least three who are facing tough re-election races in states where a change of heart on guns could cost them: Mark Begich of Alaska, Max Baucus of Montana and Tim Johnson of South Dakota. Another four with unfavorable NRA ratings — Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia — are facing close races where a vote for gun control could be turned into a negative campaign issue. The political challenges they face are part of what is driving Reid’s nonspecificity on gun control.
If Reid were to shift his gun-control stance, it wouldn’t be his first behind-the-scenes change of heart on an issue.
Most recently, Reid became a supporter of gay rights.
In the 1990s, Reid voted for establishing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy banning public disclosure of homosexuality and voted to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman in the Defense of Marriage Act. For years since, Reid’s official position was to defer to the Mormon church on matters of equality for gays.
But in 2010, Reid was the chief force behind a successful push to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and this year he said he would vote to legalize gay marriage if it were ever presented to him on a ballot.
Before that, Reid had a full conversion on immigration.
Twenty years ago, Reid was a dogged opponent of immigration reform, waging an unsuccessful battle to end birthright citizenship, which he likened to “offering a reward” for breaking the country’s immigration laws.
“Is it any wonder that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expense at county-run hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegal alien mothers?” Reid said in a scathing 1993 Senate speech.
His wife, Landra, later told him he was wrong. Six years later, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Reid characterized his speech and the bill behind it as “short-sighted,” a “mistake,” and said he was “embarrassed that he made such a proposal.”
Reid is now one of the leading voices for immigration reform. He won the 2010 race for Senate largely because of the confidence Nevada Hispanics had in him for pushing so hard to pass the Dream Act.
In each of those matters, former aides said, an event, a person or an outside force Reid encountered changed his mind.
On gay rights, former aides said, Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraq war veteran who was discharged from the Army National Guard after he revealed his homosexuality, played a significant role in Reid’s change of heart. Choi gave Reid his West Point graduation ring in mid-2010 to hold onto until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed. Reid returned it to him that December.
On immigration, it was Landra Reid and the growing Hispanic community in Nevada who made him rethink his stance.
“He’s a superior listener, reader and observer of truth. ... He takes it all in, he hears and processes everything usually before a person is done speaking,” one close confidante said. “He doesn’t weigh it all equally; he has his own internal scale and an unbelievable ability to balance a lot of incoming information.
“From there he decides. It’s not an emotionless process. In fact, I believe nearly all his decisions are rooted in core human dignities. And sometimes, one individual can have a lot of impact.”
Or in some cases, 20. If Reid changes his well-established opinion on gun control, former aides said, it will almost certainly be because of the children who perished in Newtown.
You never know what Reid believes
Doing Obama's bidding is what he will be remembered for
Obama is taking his gun controls cues from CNNs Piers Morgan who was kicked out England for their perverse interpretation of the 2nd Amendment
Why is it that Liberals never ever want to hold the deranged killer responsibility. Why is it Liberals refuse to address mental illness. Why is it Liberals refuse to address the cultural environment of violence.
Killers will murder even if guns and clips are scarce but Liberal think that more gun control is the panacea of stopping murders.
The scam of Senate Diane Feinstein's bill is the exemption for all the guns and clip already in circulation in America and it exempt buying over 900 named guns restricting only 100 guns
*coughs*
"Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts. These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."
--Gov Mitt Romney(After signing a permanent ban on assault rifles, 2004)
Markey what does that statement from Romney have to do with this article. Wake up its 2013, almost, stop living in the past and using a statement a person made that is not in politics. "cough"
Markey like most Libs has his states confused...I don't remember a mass shooting occurring in Massachusetts recently....hmm..might he be a hater of Romney?...and as for your cough...seek medical help...
Dirty Harry needs to retire and take is gun(s) out for a pity party.
Nobody with a brain changes their policy based on an aberration.
Of course, I said "nobody with a brain." Democrats are jumping all over the Newtown tragedy to take away our guns, and the media is joining them in working to take away our guns.
As for Harry. Total embarrassment.
Without the Second Amendment fully in tact, the First Amendment will be on life support. Connecticut State Troopers are already warning social networks and the lowlifes in the media of Federal laws about spreading false information whether it's believed to be true or not. These massacres are about psychopaths on drugs and everyone knows it.
"Markey what does that statement from Romney have to do with this article."
"Markey like most Libs has his states confused..."
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I m retired Military AND a reality based gun owner, and i say pare-military firearms do not belong in the hands of civilians. Period.
New restrictions are coming, because the typical gun nut "talking points" ranting i m hearing and seeing in print are excellent "ammo" to be used against them in debates, just like in the healthcare debates this year.
Example:
Raise the requirement to own para-military firearms(and large magazines) to a class 3 FFL like level, and put extra taxes on guns and ammo to help cover the costs(legal and medical) that America s gun culture inflicts on American society.
Now just take the answer that a gun owning wingnut will give to my arguement above and print it, Boom baby yeah..
"Nobody with a brain changes their policy based on an aberration."
lovinglife -- amen to that statement. Essentially this debate is giving power to what violent criminals do when they go berserk. Add into the mix the current media feeding frenzy over the issue, seems to the point every time anyone without a badge pulls a trigger it's all over the news. Essentially that's the wolves dictating to the sheep how it's going to be.
"Without the Second Amendment fully in tact [sic], the First Amendment will be on life support."
Warrior --good post. As the U.S. Supreme's Heller decision explained one of that Amendment's purposes, it keeps tyrants at bay. Eroding the liberties of those who responsibly exercise them has never been the solution. Yet what else can you expect from the men of a nation who allows their little girls to be fondled and their elderly mothers forced to remove their diapers for inspection, all in the name of the TSA keeping us "safe"??
"...government security is just another kind of violence." -- Rep. Ron Paul @ http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/dec...
Markey, the only "gun nuts" are those miguided folks who own firearms but would emasculate the 2nd Amendment. You apparently don't recall why the British marched to Lexington Commons in 1775 and why American Patriots were there to stop them.
"A majority of Americans support banning the sale of military-style assault weapons"
FALSE: Read the latest Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159569/americ...
They support background checks on buying guns at gun shows, and limits on high capacity magazines, but DO NOT support a ban on "assault rifles" or handguns.
With any luck he'll not be re elected. He is a total embarrassment to the people of Nevada...
Remember the mantra of the Obama administration:
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"....
They're setting up a program that will seize guns from Americans and turn us into a toady European country.
Have a longer waiting period, a bigger fee and a batter background check for ARs AKs etc. Use the money for school security. Reid is an expert at splitting the difference.
"Remember the mantra of the Obama administration: "Never let a good crisis go to waste"....
tallison -- it's not just Obama, and it's nothing new. See below.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
Well, Reid will do whatever he's told to do by his boss.
Also, the militia issue has been settled twice recently by the SCOTUS. For those of you not paying attention this means its an individual right not a group right. The founders felt that this was so important that they enshrined it in the Constitution to make it very difficult to change and basically hysteria proof.
Very good advice here on the gun show. Enjoy yourself. Obey the law. If unsure about the law ask a show employee. Report to the authorities, anyone offering you any illegal object or transaction.
Ignore any protestors. They are there for the attention. If you engage or acknowledge them, they win.
The gun fetishists need to get real. No need for high capacity magazines and the gun show loophole.
Awesome! Arizona County Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans to deploy an armed volunteer posse to protect Phoenix-area students! I also heard there is a plan that will deal with the high unemployment rate of soldiers that are coming back from war. The plan is to hire all of them to secure the schools! They all have experience of fierce fighting, hand to hand combat, putting outposts around schools, setting tripwires, fortifying bunkers, plus a whole lot of other combat skills! The know about wearing bullet proof vests, helmets, carrying explosives on them, several weapons, gas masks and knives! We have our warriors to protect our schools".they are coming home every day from the war. And as far as covering the cost, well, if we trim a little bit from social security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid and heating assistance, we should be able to pay these warriors to save our children! NO more unemployed veterans and NO more violence in the schools"the best of both worlds!
"You apparently don't recall why the British marched to Lexington Commons in 1775"
------------------------------
Sarah Palin said the Brits were a walkin there to take their muskets. So the Lexingtoners meet the Redcoats on the road and screamed; "You can take my musket from my dead hands!" and then they started blastin, you betcha..
"Ignore any protestors. They are there for the attention. If you engage or acknowledge them, they win."
-------------------
You re that scared of anti-gun protestors? Why? They don t have guns, they are basically un-armed.
Well maybe a taser or some pepper gas, but that s nothing serious for real gun folk i assume..
Mr. Markey: You said earlier that you are retired military. Please pray, what branch? I spent 20 years in the USMC. Did you bear arms in combat? I did. I also had ancestors at Lexington and the Concord Bridge.
Guns do not kill people; people kill people.
The rush to ban guns does not address the root cause issue...
We need to assess our mental health capacity in the US. We have way too many psychologists and psychiatrists who are not doing a good job.
The shooter in Colorado Movie Massacre even wrote a letter to his pschologist a couple of weeks in advance. The psychologist failed her job.
The person in Conneticutt had aspbergers - again a mental health condition. He was going to be committed by his mother and went bizerk.
We need faster responses from the mental health psychologists and psychologists to keep the public safe.
but with the rush to judgment by the radical left, they are only addressing guns. They fail to address the root cause.
Guns do not kill people.
People kill people. we need to understand why they do that.
yes, some guns may need to be limited in sales; but even in Conneticutt they had very harsh gun control laws on the books already. Conneticutt still saw this insane murder.
and when we have a President Obama who ships guns to Mexican drug lords - we will arm the illegal criminals, but we will not protect those who need protection. Makes no sense.
Shame on this idiotic writer who does not look beyond the latest fad to trash the wrong thing.
I have a CCW, I retired from the US Army after serving 24 years, including multiple combat deployments. My weapon goes with me everywhere it is legal to carry. DO I feel like assualt style weapons are needed by the average person, no. Do I believe that we need to look at regulating weapons a bit more stringently, yes. You can take your average Glock with a 10 rd magazine and reload a number of times quickly, and fire as quickly as you can pull the trigeger, so banning large capactiy magazines aren't the best answer to the problem. When I'm at home I store my weapon in a biometric gun safe so my children can't access it. I obtained a CCW to protect my family and myself, not to engage an active shooter. If my family is safe I have the training to do so, however you run the risk of being mistaken for the suspect when law enforcement arrives. I believe most CCW holders feel the same way, they got the permit for themselves, not to try and save the world. If its possible and you are trained, then maybe under the right circumstances you might engage an active shooter, but you had better be careful if you make that chice. If this meakes me a "gun nut" so be it.