Bush is losing some gun owners

White House proposals to allow increased logging here have drawn
protests from some traditional Republicans.
MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF

http://csmonitor.com/2003/1204/p02s01-uspo.html

Why some gun owners are unhappy with Bush

They say the administration has strayed too far from earlier GOP
principles on the environment.

By Todd Wilkinson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

When Jimmie Rosenbruch went north last month, bound for the high
country of southeast Alaska to stalk mountain goats, the Utah
sportsman and master hunting guide toted more than a rifle into the
wilderness.
Mr. Rosenbruch, a burly lifelong Republican and acquaintance of former
President George H.W. Bush, also carried personal displeasure over the
natural- resource agenda of Mr. Bush's son.


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In particular, Rosenbruch and a groundswell of other gun owners from
the lower 48 are challenging the Bush administration's plan to undo
protection of Alaska's Tongass and Chugach national forests by opening
both to increased logging and road construction.

For the current president, who relied upon unwavering support from the
so-called "hook and bullet" crowd to win in 2000, the kind of public
criticism now being voiced by political conservatives like Rosenbruch
represents a potential problem in 2004, observers say.

According to a report from the Fish and Wildlife Service, hunters and
anglers are a formidable force not only in what they spend, but also
in the political power they wield. More than 34 million Americans over
age 16 fish annually; 13 million hunt.

Many analysts think most of these people are Republican and supportive
of President Bush. But now, a growing vocal minority is taking a stand
on concerns they have - from weakening water protection standards in
fishable waterways, to proposals to drill for oil in what have been
off-limits areas. These people want a clean and healthy environment
not only for hunters and anglers, but for all Americans - and they
believe Bush is straying too far from this principle.

Petition in circulation

Perhaps no example is more poignant than a recent petition signed by
hundreds of gun clubs - on behalf of untold thousands of members -
telling Dale Bosworth, Forest Service chief, to keep in place
Clinton-era protection of old-growth forests, two-thirds of which lie
in Alaska.

"The response took me by surprise, especially in Texas," says Greg
Petrich, the petition organizer, who is also a registered Alaska
Republican and former commercial fisherman.

When Mr. Petrich began circulating the petition in October, he
modestly hoped to enlist 100 gun clubs in the lower 48. But the
response has been so overwhelming that he now believes he'll have 500
organizations signed up by the end of the year. The list of supporters
includes the Allegheny Country Rifle Club of Pittsburgh (oldest gun
club in the US), 49 combat handgun clubs, and 40 shooting groups in
Mr. Bush's home state of Texas.

In addition, conservation organizations like Trout Unlimited, with its
large membership of suburban "country club" Republicans who love to
fly-fish, have questioned the Bush administration's opening of
pristine public lands to natural-resource development.

Opinion polls have made the Bush administration well aware that its
handling of the environment holds resonance as a serious domestic
campaign issue. And analysts see the millions of suburban sport
shooters and rural hunters - traditionally the core of the National
Rifle Association (NRA) membership - as representing an important
swing vote.

One of those joining Petrich's campaign is Carl Rosier, a state game
and fish commissioner who served under former Alaska Gov. Wally
Hickel, a stalwart conservative Republican.

Reached in Juneau, Mr. Rosier explained that proposed oil drilling in
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - which he supports - is the
battle front that most Americans associate with Alaska. But the Bush
administration's current efforts to restore publicly subsidized
logging of Alaskan rain forest will also be a green lightning rod in
the coming months.

"You've got a bunch of timber beasts [former timber-industry
lobbyists] setting environmental policy in Alaska, and that's wrong,"
Rosier says. "In three years, we've witnessed a 180-degree swing from
Bill Clinton to George W. Bush."

Both Rosier and Rosenbruch believe in "reasonable" resource
extraction, but they say Republicans are adrift from the stewardship
principles championed a century ago by GOP President Theodore
Roosevelt. Such sentiments could cost candidates at the polls.

Too alarmist?

Yet many backers of the president believe that Bush has nothing to
fear. With its 4 million members, the NRA doesn't see a large number
of gun owners turning against Bush. "Without a doubt, he has the
strongest support among NRA members of any modern president," says
J.P. Nelson, the NRA's Western field director based in Mesa, Ariz. "We
were mobilized in the last election, and we will be again."

Still Petrich, who is a member of the Northern Sportsmen Network, says
not all hunters need to support Tongass protection in order to seize
the attention of campaign strategists. "Small percentages of voters
could have a big impact in 2004," Petrich says. "If this
administration senses that more hunters and shooters are becoming
ambivalent about Bush because of his conservation agenda, it could
force them to reconsider what they're doing in wild places like the
Tongass."