Dustin, Get Your Gun! (UPDATED)

A Democratic political operative bragged to me a few years back that Democrats in Arkansas could always win by tilting to the right of the three g's – God, guns, and gays.  Obviously, this was a few years back as his party has not had as much success with this lately, but they still try.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel reached into this strategy this week in an attempt to salvage his floundering campaign for governor.  He has struggled with two of the g's – with his opposition to the gay foster care amendment, and of course, his “inappropriateness” problem.  So he went for his guns.

McDaniel made the rounds on Thursday telling the press how much he does not care for all these executive orders from President Obama.  He is so disturbed by them that he might just have to join suit against the federal government to protect the Second Amendment rights of Arkansans.

“No constitutional right can be infringed upon by an executive order, so I think that the attorneys general of the nation, including me, will be very protective to ensure that the federal executive branch doesn’t overstep,” McDaniel told the Arkansas News Bureau.

It is quite a reverse for McDaniel from his previous position that suing the federal government over ObamaCare would be “frivolous.”  But then he is now running for higher office and trying to show that he has his Second Amendment chops.  It is similar to then-Sen. Blanche Lincoln's strategy when she was in trouble.  That didn't work out so well for Lincoln.

And it might not for McDaniel either. The problem with this strategy is that it opens up McDaniel's history of gun control, particularly in response to school shootings as is the current debate.

His response to the school shootings in Jonesboro back when he was a trial lawyer was not to defend the Second Amendment, but rather to launch a lawsuit against the Remington gun manufacturer in an attempt to hold them responsible for the tragedy.

That issue came up during his first campaign for Attorney General back in 2006.  McDaniel dismissed the criticism saying he was in law school at the time.

But that answer might not stand up to scrutiny.  He was admitted to the bar in March of 1999, which was before the lawsuit was filed later that year.  Plus, McDaniel's signature with his bar license number is all over the lawsuit filing.

Of course, McDaniel would rather talk about how many guns he owns.

UPDATE – McDaniel is still shooting off on this one. Speaking at a chamber banquet in Malvern, he upped the ante talking about arriving at the scene of the Jonesboro school shooting in 1998.  From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report…

The keynote speaker at the chamber banquet was Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who had previously announced his campaign for governor in 2014.

During his remarks, he told the gathering that he was “distressed” by President Barack Obama’s proposed gun-control measures.

The day before the banquet, the president asked the U.S. Congress to require background checks for all gun sales and ban military-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The president also signed 23 executive orders, including one that will make more federal information available for background checks of gun purchasers.

McDaniel said he will examine the orders to see if they infringe on the rights of citizens.

The state attorney general, a former police officer, told the audience he went to the scene of the 1998 school shooting in Jonesboro, where four students and a teacher were killed.

“I never forgot what I saw, but I never felt the solution was to curtail the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” McDaniel said to applause.

It was only a few months later that McDaniel filed a lawsuit suing Remington, the company that made the gun used in the shooting.