Gun-control compromise called likely - San Francisco Chronicle

The bitter national political divide over gun control played out Friday on live TV, as the National Rifle Association's leader delivered part of his statement at a Washington news conference with a determined protester's sign bearing the words "NRA killing our kids" displayed before him.

But despite a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between two passionate sides engaged in a tug-of-war on the issue after the school shootings in Connecticut a week ago, "there is huge common ground" and potential for agreement, said Morris Fiorina, a Hoover Institution fellow and author of "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America."

"The 5 percent of the extremes" at both ends of the political spectrum, Fiorina said, may hunker down and refuse to bend. But history shows that a vast swath of Americans are open to compromise on gun control - even those who see themselves as strong pro-gun advocates, he said.

Fiorina, who wrote a case study of American attitudes on guns after the shooting at Columbine High School, said the national psyche on gun control doesn't appear to have shifted much in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., shootings Dec. 14 that killed 20 children and seven adults before the gunman killed himself.

After the 1999 shootings by two Columbine students, who killed 13 people before killing themselves, Fiorina found that nearly half of Americans believed that "paying more attention to kids' antisocial attitudes" would help prevent repeat disasters.

Fiorina also found that nearly 80 percent of Americans supported registration of all firearms and 70 percent backed a ban on importation of high-capacity clips.

"There was outrage," he said, with both major political parties saying something had to be done. "Then they got hung up on little things like, 'How do you define a gun show?' "

Fiorina said the political impact of the Connecticut shootings might be more lasting because it follows several high-profile mass killings this year. That most of the Newtown victims were children 6 or 7 years old has prompted an outpouring of tears and a particularly passionate response.

Armed guards in schools

On Friday, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, in the organization's first public statement since the massacre, said armed guards in schools could address the spate of recent mass shootings around the country.

Medea Benjamin of San Francisco, co-founder of the protest group Code Pink and one of two demonstrators arrested at the event, called the gun lobby group's approach "tone deaf" and politically unacceptable. "My God, calling for schools to have armed guards - they are so out of touch," she said.

Twitter feeds and social media erupted in reaction, while California U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer lambasted LaPierre's comments.

But gun rights advocates such as Sam Paredes, who heads Gun Owners of California in Folsom (Sacramento County), said liberal politicians are ignoring millions of Americans who value guns as critical to their safety and self-defense. Paredes supported LaPierre's call to examine violence in video games, movies and media.

"The divide is so great because the proponents of gun control, who look upon that as a solution, will not accept our position," Paredes said.

Each day, he said, thousands of law-abiding Americans use guns to defend themselves, "and if you do anything to prevent them from doing that you will put them in the category of victims."

Support for gun control

But a poll by GOP pollster Frank Luntz this year showed that 87 percent of NRA members believed "support for Second Amendment rights goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals."

The poll also showed that 74 percent of NRA members and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners backed a requirement that anyone purchasing a gun submit to a criminal background check.

Still, political observers including California's Patrick Dorinson, who writes the cowboylibertarian.com website, said there is an enduring perception of a deep division between rural America - where guns are often a way of life - and urban and suburban cultures, where progressive voters tend to reside.

"I don't know how you can ever bridge that divide," he said.

Like many Americans, Dorinson hopes the conversation about gun violence - and America's gun-loving entertainment culture - will carry on in earnest.

"Maybe the time has come," he said, for Hollywood studio chief Harvey Weinstein "to sit across from Wayne LaPierre.

"If the president wants to be a president," he said, "he needs to get them all in the room."

Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer. E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cmarinucci