Gun owners in West Virginia turned their backs on Democrats in the last two presidential elections largely over Second Amendment fears, but one veteran hunter says none need fear a Barack Obama administration.

In fact, says add-on superdelegate Pete Cuffaro, gun rights are the least of concerns of the Illinois senator.

"Right now, it's state of the nation, and we're in a sad state," Cuffaro said on the second day of business Tuesday the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

For the record, Cuffaro is a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association who hunts and fishes, is a frequent visitor at rifle ranges and the owner of a permit to pack a concealed weapon.

What's more, he is confined to an electric wheelchair, the result of diving in what was labeled as an 8-foot swimming pool back on June 25, 1983 and found himself in water only half as deep.

In the shallow pool, he wound up with a broken neck.

Cuffaro was instrumental, with the aid of Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, in passing historic legislation that enables the physically challenged to use crossbows to hunt — a privilege won after a contentious battle with bow hunters in West Virginia.

"Republicans beat up on us. It's always gays, guns and God," he said of social and moral issues that often hit the flashpoint.

"Im a Roman Catholic, too, and the abortion issues come into play."

Republican friends who share his affection for firearms often question why he is a Democrat, and Cuffaro, who grew up in Ohio County community of Elm Grove, says he is quick to point out that when one of his party favorites is in office, he isn't hesitant about speaking up for firearm ownership rights.

Besides, he points out, a president is only one-third of the government, so gun owners can rely on their congressional representatives to defend their rights.

But in the two past two elections, when West Virginians helped elect and then re-elect Republican George W. Bush, it was the gun issue that kept Democrats from taking a state where they hold a better than 2-to-1 voter registration edge, Cuffaro maintains.

"There's no doubt in my mind, it was the guns," he said.

In Bush's first time out, hundreds rallied in Beckley to hear then-NRA President Charlton Heston warn against a possible Al Gore presidency.

Cuffaro described himself as the second generation of blue-collar stock, learning at his father�s hand to till the soil and live off the land.

"We even have a garden to this day, still living off the land," he said.

He views the gun issue as a scare tactic, one the Republicans predictably revive in each election to get their candidates elected, when, in fact, the real power lies within the judicial system. Just recently, he pointed out, the nation's highest tribunal rejected a handgun ban in the nation's capital. No president's sentiment either way would have influenced the court, either, and that includes Obama, the delegate noted.

"... that should be the least of our worries,� he says of the firearms issue.

"Take energy. If you're middle class, how much is coming out of your income to pay for gas to get back and forth to work? The economy. The jobs we've lost in this administration. Health care. It's a crime in today's world that other countries have health care and we even send money to support those people and we can't even support our own people."

As for the Second Amendment and a candidate of Obama's unflinching liberalism, Cuffaro sees no need for hunters and gun owners in general to fret.

"Absolutely," he said. "And not only on guns but with those other issues. The gun issue is where we have to rely on our senators and our congressmen."

E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com