Tully: Joe Donnelly’s position on guns no longer tolerable

U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly is one of my favorite politicians.

The Indiana Democrat is serious-minded and hard-working, and he has focused his career in the Senate on critical issues, such as opioid addiction and mental health treatment for military members and veterans. He is willing to buck his party and seems much more interested in serving Indiana than becoming a cable-TV fixture. If there is widespread gridlock in Washington, it’s not because of lawmakers like Donnelly.

I don’t mind that he veers farther to the right than I do on a range of issues. He represents Indiana, after all, and his pragmatic brand of politics fits the state well.

Time and again, in a nod to the challenges Indiana Democrats face when running statewide, I have looked past Donnelly’s troubling record on gun issues, just as many independent and Democratic voters did when he ran for the Senate in 2012. Donnelly does so much right, and his Republican opponent that year was so wrong, that tolerating his stance on guns seemed reasonable.

It doesn’t anymore.

Yes, there was rampant gun violence before that 2012 election. This is not a new problem. Still, everything feels different now. Since Donnelly’s election in November 2012, we’ve had Newtown and the Washington Navy Yard, Fort Hood and San Bernardino, Charleston and Orlando. We’ve had mass shootings at a community college in Oregon, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, all across Kalamazoo one recent night, and in so many other places. All of this on top of the horrific gun violence that is shattering so many neighborhoods in the state Donnelly serves.

It feels different now.

Donnelly’s overall record on gun policies, first in the House and now in the Senate, and his general avoidance of taking a leadership position on the issue, seems much less tolerable than it did four years ago. Those of us who have supported both Donnelly and smarter gun policies need to let him know that while he doesn’t have to be a liberal on gun control, he at least has to start acting like the pragmatic moderate that he is on most other issues.

Pragmatic moderates do not receive repeated “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association. Pragmatic moderates do not lead their state in the amount of campaign contributions received from the NRA. Pragmatic moderates do not co-sponsor bills blocking local gun control measures, such as those he has fought in Washington, D.C. And they do not oppose bans on the consumer sale of assault-style weapons or high-capacity magazines.

Donnelly took a welcome step in 2013, announcing he would support an expansion of background checks after the massacre of 20 elementary school students and several educators in Connecticut. It wasn’t exactly a profile in courage, as a Pew Research poll found support from 85 percent of American adults for the idea. Nonetheless, it was a good move. Unfortunately, Donnelly wasn’t a forceful voice for the cause and Congress ultimately did nothing.

It’s become more clear than ever that Congress must not only tighten background check rules but also better track gun sales and ban the sale of the type of assault-style weapons used in this weekend’s tragedy in Orlando. To do this, lawmakers such as Donnelly must rethink their past positions. There is a rational middle ground on gun policy, one that extends beyond the no-brainer matter of universal background checks, and Donnelly is well qualified to help find it.

Despite so much rhetoric to the contrary, such changes would not rid Americans of their Second Amendment rights, and voting for such laws wouldn’t expose Donnelly as anything close to being a liberal. This would simply put him in line with a solid majority of Americans, if not the gun lobby. It is possible to be both a strong supporter of gun rights and an opponent of the gun lobby’s radical, all-or-nothing message.

Donnelly has been an effective senator in many ways. He’s been, as I wrote a while back, “the man in the middle.” But his career record on guns has been closer to NRA proxy than middle American. Sadly, his positions have helped the NRA block reasonable steps on gun policy.

That was wrong before. It’s intolerable now.

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or on Twitter: @matthewltully.