If there is a time and place for Bernie Sanders to start squirming over gun control, you might expect it to be at his rally in Tucson on Friday night.
He will address a crowd at Reid Park, just 11 miles from the supermarket parking lot where a deranged gunman murdered six people and wounded 13, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in 2011.
The Democratic presidential candidate will be addressing a progressive audience which has backed efforts to improve gun safety in this liberal island and would dearly love to do the same in the rest of Arizona, a deep-red state.
Sanders will be speaking just hours after President Obama is scheduled to visit Roseburg, Oregon, to meet relatives of the victims of the latest massacre, which claimed nine lives last week.
Earlier on Friday a confrontation between two groups of Northern Arizona University students escalated into a shooting that left one student dead and three more injured. And on Saturday, a shooting at Texas Southern University left one person dead and another wounded.
Guns: the topic of the moment – and an awkward subject for Sanders.
The Vermont senator has a history of opposing gun regulation. As a congressman in the House, he voted in 1993 against the so-called Brady bill, which mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers. In 2005, he voted to shield gun makers and dealers from lawsuits.
Those positions reflected a common sentiment in rural Vermont, where hunting is popular. But they now smoulder in the midst of Sanders’ bid for the Democratic party nomination.
Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have staked out aggressive positions on gun control and are expected to shine a light on their rival’s exposed flank during the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas next week.
Yet when Sanders climbs onstage in Tucson, he will, it seems, have little to worry about.
“I think people will give him a pass on this,” Steve Kozachik, a Democratic city council member who has led gun safety efforts, told the Guardian. “I do not think it will be an awkward audience for him because gun safety is not the paramount issue on people’s minds.”
However much campaigners may wish otherwise, even at this heightened moment of awareness about gun violence, voters in Tucson, a rallying point for the cause, apparently care more about jobs and inequality.
Sanders’ call for a people’s revolution to chase corporate and Wall Street lobbyists from Washington has electrified the Democratic base, and Tucson, still limping from the great recession, does not seem inclined to spoil the welcome over guns.
At the rally, Representative Raul Grijalva, a veteran gun-control campaigner from Arizona, will give Sanders his first congressional endorsement. Grijalva, a longtime member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, will boost the candidate’s Latino outreach.
When approached by the Guardian, other campaigners muted any unease. Through their group Americans for Responsible Solutions, Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, a retired Nasa astronaut, declined to name Sanders and re-issued a previous statement.
The group lauded Clinton’s proposed plan for legislative and executive action and asked other White House hopefuls to say whether they would close loopholes which let felons and domestic abusers buy guns without a background check, and let some convicted stalkers legally buy and own guns. “The American people deserve to know where the candidates stand on what we can do together to make our communities safer places to live.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, a group which includes Pam Simon, a former aide to Giffords, also declined to comment in advance of Sanders’ visit.
One activist who did speak out – Geraldine Hills, founder of Arizonans for Gun Safety – was a Republican. “His record on guns is not good,” said Hills, speaking in a personal capacity. “His position on the Brady checks and corporate liability were completely wrong.” Hills lost a brother to gun violence 21 years ago.
Sanders’ views have evolved over the years. After the 2012 slaughter of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, he voted to expand background checks and to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The National Rifle Association gave him a D-minus rating that year.
After the Oregon shootings Sanders called for a “comprehensive approach” to deter mass killings, including “sensible gun-control legislation which prevents guns from being used by people who should not have them”.
His campaign has promised to unveil proposals to address gun violence. It did not respond to a request for details about what they will entail or when they will be announced.
