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Sen. Barack Obama claims there has been only a "shift in emphasis," not "wild shifts," in his political positions. Many already know the list: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, NAFTA, public financing of campaigns, abortion, gay marriage, Social Security taxes, the death penalty and negotiating with rogue nations.Possibly one of the more remarkable changes has been his position on guns. But despite Obama's recent concession on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" that there has been a "shift in emphasis" on various issues, on guns he held firm: "You mentioned the gun position. I've been talking about the Second Amendment being an...

In one of Senate candidate Al Franken’s literary efforts titled “Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot,” he reveals his personal feelings about a topic important to many Minnesotans. In Chapter 12 of his book, I learned that candidate Franken is against private ownership of guns due to his belief that firearms in the home are “too dangerous.” I believe these views are more consistent with California or New York, where Mr. Franken still maintains corporate interests. His problem is Minnesota has always been a pro-gun state. Remember, a bipartisan majority passed “conceal and carry.” I called the National Rifle...

I was excited to see the U.S. Supreme Court affirm for the first time that the Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms was and is an individual right as intended by our Founding Fathers. Sen. John McCain understands this and he immediately praised the Court’s decision. Sen. Barack Obama still can’t figure out how he feels about it. Barack Obama has made many statements over the years that lead me to believe he would be the most anti-gun president ever elected to the White House and also leads me to believe that he doesn’t understand our...

(Who Defend Their Person and Home With a Gun) In a victory for individuals across the nation, whether they know it or not, the Supreme Court has decided the 2nd amendment does do what it says -- give the people the right to keep and bear arms. Barack Obama's rapid reversal from opposition to agreement on the issue would make mere mortals snap in half under all the G-forces.Despite Obama's propensity to say and do anything to get elected, just like with Kennedy v. Louisiana, Obama's record does not match his rhetoric. In fact, Barack Obama specifically voted four times...

The National Rifle Association, long feared by Democrats as the most powerful lobby group in US politics, announced that it will spend $40 million during the campaign, $15 million to specifically persuade gun owners to vote against the Democratic party candidate. The issue of gun rights has been catapulted to the centre of the general election this year, with the Supreme Court last week upholding the second amendment of the Constitution's right to bear arms, and throwing out a ban on handguns in Washington DC. Mr Obama was careful after that ruling to state his support for gun ownership but...

As Robert Novak noted today, voters could find it difficult to get a read on Barack Obama’s real feelings about the rights of gun owners and the constitutionality of gun bans. Obama has certainly made his position opaque with a number of contradictory statements in this campaign. Perhaps the tribulations of Hale DeMar and the legislative response to an act of self-defense can help make Obama’s impulses a little more transparent. Hale DeMar confronted a burglar in his home in December 2003 and shot him twice, forcing the burglar to flee and to seek medical care. Police arrested Mario Billings...

Barack Obama may be getting a pass from the National Media on virtually every issue, but he's not going to get a pass from the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the issue of 2nd Amendment Rights. The NRA is planning a $40 million campaign this fall to make sure Americans know that 2nd Amendment Rights will be in jeopardy if Barack Obama is elected President. Jonathan Martin has the details in these excerpts from a report out today at Politico.com . . .

WHEN IT comes to gun control, the Democratic Party is a house divided against itself. That helps explain Barack Obama's dizzyingly inconsistent positions on District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment case decided by the Supreme Court last week. As a candidate for the Illinois Legislature in the 1990s, Obama had supported legislation to "ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns," so it wasn't surprising that he endorsed the gun ban being challenged in Heller while campaigning for president. In November, for example, his campaign told the Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is...

Friday, June 27, 2008 By now we all know where presidential nominee Barack Obama stands on the Second Amendment. During the primaries, Obama tried to hide behind vague statements of support for “sportsmen” or unfounded claims of general support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. But don’t listen to his campaign rhetoric! His real record, based on votes taken, political associations, long-standing positions, and his own words, shows that Barack Obama is a very serious threat to our Second Amendment liberties. A June 26 National Review Online story describes Barack Obama’s latest attempt to deceive the American people...

Presumptive Republican presidential nomine John McCain criticized his Democratic rival Thursday, accusing Barack Obama of having "elitist" gun views. The comments came after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns and ruled that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, The Financial Times reported.McCain hailed the ruling as a "landmark victory" for gun rights. Referring to remarks Obama made during the primary campaign, McCain said Obama is out of touch with Americans on gun rights. "Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling...

· Candidate's stance at odds with former position · Democrat backs death penalty for child rapist Barack Obama intensified his campaign to appeal to voters on the life-and-death issues of the American heartland yesterday by stepping away from his past support for gun control. In the latest in a series of policy reversals for the Democratic presidential candidate, Obama came out in support of yesterday's supreme court decision overturning a gun ban in the city of Washington that had been a model for fighting urban crime. He had previously supported the Washington ban, the strictest in the US. It was...

"The problem is that we’ve got a position, oftentimes by the NRA, that says any regulation whatsoever is the camel’s nose under the tent. And that, I think, is not where the American people are at. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions."

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Alexa Ainsworth Report: With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.'s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an "inartful" statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional. "That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator's consistent position," Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News. The statement which Burton describes as an inaccurate representation of the senator's views was made to the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 20, 2007. In a...

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the Second Amendment provides individuals the right to bear arms was a "landmark victory" and that his Democratic rival is on the wrong side of the debate. "Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today," McCain said in a statement issued by his campaign following Thursday's 5-4 ruling. "Today's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns...

Conventional “wisdom” suggests that the current political environment favors Democrats in 2008. The long Democratic primary between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kept the focus on the candidates and away from the issues. Except for the broad themes of “hope” and “change” few Obama supporters can name a single position articulated by the Illinois senator. However, certain events may inject issues into the electoral debate that help John McCain and the Republicans. High gasoline prices have changed the dynamics of the national campaign, shifting public opinion toward offshore drilling and blaming Democrats for obstructing efforts to increase domestic energy...

This should serve as a warning to all freedom loving Americans. Before pulling the lever this coming November, remember: both Hillary and Obama support draconian gun laws aimed not at criminals (because criminals don't obey the laws anyway), but at law abiding citizens. Click on Source URL to play. It's 9 minutes, but worth it.

In Barack Hussein Obama's version of the Constitution it says that you can have guns for "...the purposes of hunting and target shooting." Strangely enough, that's not the version I own.

WASHINGTON -- Eight years after a national debate over gun control helped keep Democrat Al Gore out of the White House, the National Rifle Assn. and its Republican allies are launching a new campaign to defeat Barack Obama. But this time, the issue that GOP strategists once relied on to provide crucial votes in close elections has lost much of its political punch. The NRA may have become a victim of its own success. Congress hasn't passed major legislation to restrict gun use in 14 years. Democrats -- scarred by past NRA campaigns -- almost never talk about the issue...

The presidential primary season is finally over, and it is now time for gun owners to take a careful look at just where apparent nominee Barack Obama stands on issues related to the Second Amendment. During the primaries, Obama tried to hide behind vague statements of support for “sportsmen” or unfounded claims of general support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. But his real record, based on votes taken, political associations, and long standing positions, shows that Barack Obama is a serious threat to Second Amendment liberties. Don’t listen to his campaign rhetoric! Look instead to what he...

Updated: May 30, 2008 06:44 PM EDT Reporting from KTVQ in Billings Chelsea Clinton told supporters in Billings that the country needs to do more with gun control laws, during the final visit on her two day tour campaigning on her mother's behalf in the Magic City. During a question and answer session before seniors and other supporters at the Yellowstone County Council on Aging Office Friday morning, Chelsea said, "We also need to do more with gun control. And my mom supports- naturally what she supported in New York. Which is: we have different gun control laws in New...

Registry not appropriate for all states. Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton told Montana reporters Friday that she no longer favors national handgun registration and licensing, even as she supports such measures in her adopted state of New York. "What I came out for was the New York law," the U.S. senator said in a noon conference call Friday. "I don't think there is any contradiction between defending Second Amendment rights and trying to keep guns out of the hands of" criminals and the mentally ill. In 2000, as she was beginning her campaign for senator from New York, Clinton...

Casual visitors to Barack Obama's website might be misled about the position on gun control held by the U.S. Senate's most liberal member - that is, if they can even find it. One has to first click on "Issues" - then on "Additional Issues" - and then on "Sportsmen" to locate it. Even then, ones gets this rather nebulous paragraph: Barack Obama did not grow up hunting and fishing, but he recognizes the great conservation legacy of America’s hunters and anglers and has great respect for the passion that hunters and anglers have for their sport. Were it not for...

Right now, one of the most anti-gun politicians ever to set foot in Washington, D.C., may be just one election away from the Oval Office—and far too few gun owners realize the true threat to freedom this candidate represents. No, it’s not Hillary Clinton—we already know how bad she is. It’s Senator Barack H. Obama, D-Ill., the man who promises “change” while pretending to offer “hope.” But exactly what kind of “change” is Obama “hoping” for? It is far too easy for gun owners to slip into a false sense of security, unquestioningly accepting the candidate’s promises and proclamations regarding...

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain warned gun owners on Friday that his Democratic opponents Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would threaten their right to bear arms, as he sought to rally conservatives' support in the November election. The right to bear arms in the Constitution's second amendment is considered sacred by many U.S. gun owners. Both Obama and Clinton tout their support for it, although they also say ways must be found to keep guns from falling into the hands of criminals or those who are mentally ill. But the Arizona senator accused the two Democrats...

Contact: Press Office, 703-650-5550; www.JohnMcCain.com ARLINGTON, Virginia, May 16 /Standard Newswire/ -- U.S. Senator John McCain will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery at the National Rifle Association of America Annual Meeting, in Louisville, KY, today at 4:30 p.m. EDT: It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon. I know you have heard from a number of my friends and colleagues today -- Governors Huckabee and Romney, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Ambassador John Bolton, and Kentucky's own, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. And you have heard from an American hero, Greg Stubbe, who sacrificed greatly so that...

Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), looking to shore up support with the once-hostile National Rifle Association (NRA), used his speech to the group’s national convention to blast Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Seizing on what has come to be known as Obama’s “bitterness” comments, McCain on Friday said the Second Amendment “isn’t some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances.” In his prepared remarks, McCain also hit Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), though to a noticeably lesser degree. McCain said Democrats will dress up...

The political “hot button” issues of guns and judges have become intertwined in this election year. The fate of both issues will be decided by the candidate we elect as president. Why? Because over a four-year term, that president will likely appoint at least two and possibly three justices to the United States Supreme Court. Simply stated, this year when we elect a president, we will also cast our ballot for the next Supreme Court. Everyone concerned about the Second Amendment and judicial accountability should heed John McCain’s speech to the NRA on May 16. The presumptive Republican nominee will...

During a campaign debate on April 16, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were asked if the District of Columbia's ban on gun possession, now facing a challenge before the Supreme Court, is constitutional. "I think a total ban, with no exceptions under any circumstances, might be found by the Court not to be. But I don't know the facts," said Clinton (Yale Law '73), dodging the question for the third and final time. Obama (Harvard Law '91) also pleaded ignorance, confessing he hadn't "listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence." When moderator Charlie Gibson pointed out that...

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s mailing attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s record on guns appears to include a striking visual gaffe: The image of the gun pictured on the face of the mailing is reversed, making it a nonexistent left-handed model of the Mauser 66 rifle. To make matters worse, a prominent gun dealer said, it’s an expensive German gun with customized features that make it clearly European. “The gun in the photo does not exist,” said Val Forgett III, president of Navy Arms in Martinsburg, W.Va. Forgett's company was Mauser’s agent in the United States when the gun was released, and it...

Hillary Clinton or one of her allies is reaching out to gun owners in Indiana. Two voters report receiving a telephone call from a woman, reading from a card, who said that if the voter valued his (and in one case her) guns, they ought not "trust Obama" and should vote for Hillary Clinton instead. One caller reports interrupting the phone banker with a question about Clinton's "pretty terrible" record on guns, but the caller was undaunted and kept reading the script.

Your Turn: Obama’s stance on guns is wrong for Montana By Erik Iverson - Your Turn - 04/17/08 When it comes to gun rights, Barack Obama isn’t shooting straight with Montana. I’ll be the first one to admit, Barack Obama is one of the finest political orators I’ve ever heard. But he can’t talk his way out of this simple fact: his views on the Second Amendment are simply out of step with the values of a vast majority of Montanans. Through both his words and his deeds, Barack Obama has shown that if elected President, he will try...

Friday, April 18, 2008 As this unusual campaign season has unfolded, we’ve seen the candidates ratcheting up their politically expedient rhetoric in an attempt to distinguish themselves as the “candidate of choice” for every constituency, while testing the far reaches of credibility in the process. We’ve heard blatantly anti-gun politicians claim to be supportive of the Second Amendment. We’ve seen hypocrisy, and we’ve heard double-speak and insults to our intelligence. When it comes to campaign rhetoric on the Second Amendment, we’ve seen a change in the way many anti-gun politicians campaign. Rather than talk openly about their desire to ban...

WASHINGTON — Some Illinois gun control advocates recall Senator Obama as a "friend" who represented a "solid vote" in favor of increased restrictions on firearm sales, but they said he was never forced to vote on an all-out ban on handguns as a member of the state Senate. Mr. Obama's position on guns is drawing renewed scrutiny following Wednesday night's Democratic debate, when the Illinois senator said he never favored a handgun ban, even though a 1996 questionnaire in his name indicated he did. The candidate questionnaire was filed with a nonprofit group, Independent Voters of Illinois–Independent Precinct Organization, during...

American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA, a front for anti-Second Amendment entities) is running an ad in Pennsylvania that says Obama supports the rights of hunters and shooters. “The Democrats and Gun Control” from the Wall Street Journal [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120839466717921537.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries] exposes Obama for the liar he is. As a state senate candidate in 1996, Mr. Obama endorsed a complete ban on all handguns in a questionnaire. The Obama campaign has claimed he “never saw or approved the questionnaire,” and that an aide filled it out incorrectly. But a few weeks ago, Politico.com found an amended version of the questionnaire [http://www.politico.com/static/PPM43_080328_obama_iviquestionaire_091096.html]. It...

Imagine an election race of Pat Robertson versus James Dobson, each of them appearing at organic grocery stores and Starbucks throughout Massachusetts, with each candidate insisting that he alone deserves the vote of gay-marriage advocates... --snip-- However, having the right to arms and the liberty to hunt is worthless if you can't buy a gun. In 1999, Mr. Obama urged enactment of a federal law prohibiting the operation of any gun store within five miles of a school or park. This would eliminate gun stores from almost the entire inhabited portion of the United States. As a state senate candidate...

The Issue: Years of mishandling the gun issue have cost progressives the support of many Americans who would otherwise be on their side. The Message: I take a back seat to no one in support of Second Amendment rights, but those rights do not extend to terrorists and criminals. The Policy: Supporting Second Amendment rights, closing gun law loopholes that terrorists and criminals can exploit, fixing the broken background check system, and reversing the Bush gun crime policy by vigorously enforcing the major federal gun laws on the books. Overview: The Gun Gap Gun owners believe that progressives are anti-gun,...

WASHINGTON, April 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) announced the endorsement of Senator Barack Obama on a national conference call this morning organized by the Obama for President campaign. AHSA President Ray Schoenke made the following statement in his endorsement of Senator Obama: ...As a gun rights organization we have not come to this decision lightly. We were formed two years ago because our research shows that millions of gun owners wanted a change. They not only wanted an organization that would protect their gun rights but an organization that was also committed to the protection...

Well, he's done it again. Barak Obama has inadvertently parted the curtain and allowed us to have a peek behind his carefully crafted stage persona. Yet he even outdid himself this time, when he showed his disdain for people of faith as well as gun owners, deriding both groups as "bitter" while clearly characterizing them as weak and misguided. Starting in the 1960's the Democratic party abandoned its roots as "the party of the working man." It is now run by arrogant elitists like Michel Moore who see people who actually go to church as rubes, and gun owners as...

Guns are expected to be a focal point in Wednesday’s debate between Democratic rivals Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), which is set for Philadelphia just days after controversial comments by Obama about gun owners. Campaign news over the weekend was dominated by recently surfaced remarks by Obama that painted small-town gun enthusiasts as “bitter.” Clinton repeatedly criticized her rival for the remarks, and favorably mentioned hunting outings she took with her late father. Clinton and Obama now face a balancing act of promoting what Democrats call common-sense gun control regulations, which are important to urban and...

STEELTON, Penn. - Democrat Barack Obama lashed out Sunday at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, mocking her vocal support for gun rights and saying her record in the Senate and as first lady belied her stated commitment to working class voters and their concerns. "She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her," Obama told an audience at a union hall here. The Illinois senator has spent three days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser were disclosed that suggested working class people are bitter about their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has cast herself in the past few days as a champion of gun owners, had a very different message when she spoke eight years ago to the Newspaper Association of America. “CLINTON TAKES AIM AT GUNS,” said the all-caps headline on the group’s Web site after she told members in May 2000, during her Senate campaign, that “there isn’t a more important task” than passing gun-safety laws. On Tuesday, she'll speak to a luncheon meeting of the same group — with a very different message. Over the weekend, Clinton sought to capitalize on remarks...

A famous saying is that Social Security is the "third rail" of American politics (touch it and die), but there's a case to be made that gun control is an even more dangerous issue. .... For many Americans, including those in Republican-leaning districts like the one Cazaoux is seeking to represent, a candidate's position on guns serves as a stand in for whether or not he (or she) is one of them. During the 1990s, Republicans used Democrats' support for gun control to paint the party as out of touch with the average voter. Using these tactics, Republicans transformed themselves...

If Sen. John McCain expects the support of gun owners in this year’s presidential race, the Arizona Republican must make an effort to overcome some decisions the National Rifle Association (NRA) has found troubling. “John McCain still has some work to do to give them a comfort level,” Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA, said during an interview with The Hill. “Truth be told, he’s not there yet.” Cox said McCain and the anti-gun control group have endured some “high-profile disagreements” in the last several years that have left many gun owners concerned about his candidacy. Specifically, McCain played...

[Barack Obama will have a big problem attracting the blue-collar Democrat voters he needs to win the presidency - they like guns and he wants to take them away.] As she clawed for survival against Barack Obama in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary this past weekend, Hillary Clinton lamely asserted her Second Amendment bona fides over that of her rival by claiming that she once shot a duck in Arkansas. As pathetic a pander as that tale was, it did serve to point out one gaping weakness in the armor of the Illinois senator, a man who must rely on blue-collar white...

Bob Owens details how Barack Obama is really tough on gun owners and dealers... while strangely soft on those who actually use guns to commit crimes: In his answers to the 1998 Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test, Obama said he favored a ban on “the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.” By definition, this would include all pistols ever made, from .22 target pistols used in the Olympics to rarely-fired pistols kept in nightstands and sock drawers for the defense of families, and every pistol in between. Obama’s strident stand would also ban all semi-automatic...

Another new wrinkle from Hillary Clinton today: she wants a presidential summit on gun control. That came up in the Q-and-A session of her stop in De Pere, after a woman asked about dealing with shootings such as the Northern Illinois University carnage. Clinton started with the line she rolled out a couple days ago about recognizing that there is “no conflict” between letting lawful gunowners have weapons and keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys and the mentally ill. She went on to propose a solution to coming up with a solution for the problem — kind...

www.gunowners.org/op0808.htmMcCain? No Way! by Sen. HL "Bill" Richardson (ret.) Chairman of the Board, GOA Americans are being told by the mainstream media that conservatives have no other choice than to back the hypocrite from Arizona. All that is required is to pretend he is "really" a conservative. "So, crawl under the big Republican tent and vote for McCain," we are told. "Besides, what other choice do you have?" We have plenty of choices, none of which calls for casting our vote for the lesser of two presidential evils. First, the Republican race isn't over. Huckabee is still around and as...

KENOSHA, Wis. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton revealed something about herself on Saturday that she acknowledged might surprise many people: she knows how to hunt. Campaigning ahead of Tuesday's Democratic nominating vote in Wisconsin, a state with a strong tradition of hunting and where many voters strongly support gun ownership rights, Clinton said she firmly backed the right to bear arms. "You know, you may not believe it but I've actually gone hunting," Clinton, 60, said at a question-and-answer session with voters at a crammed bratwurst restaurant in Kenosha. "My father taught me to shoot 100 years ago,"...

A day after the tragic shootings at NIU, Barack Obama has revealed that he thinks the 2nd Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun. That sounds surprising—and certainly not what you’d expect from someone with the Senate’s most liberal voting record. Here he is, weighing in on one of the biggest and most contentious cases the Supreme Court will hear this term, a case that finally will answer one of the great unresolved question constitutional questions: Does the 2nd Amendment protects a person’s right to own a gun, or does it merely protects a state’s right to assemble...

The National Rifle Association reports on the gun control bill that Senator John McCain introduced with liberal Democrats Joe Lieberman and Jack Reed. --------------- Introduced, appropriately enough, on Halloween, the McCain-Reed-DeWine-Lieberman gun show bill masquerades as reform but imposes bureaucratic restrictions aimed at eliminating gun shows. The legislation is based on the McCain-Lieberman bill (S. 890) from the 107th Congress, and, similarly, not only fails to address gun owners` most significant concerns, but also fails to address any issues within the National Instant Check System (NICS). McCain-Reed is not about closing a "gun show loophole"—there is no "gun show loophole."...