Posted on 05/24/2008 2:36:57 PM PDT by Josh Painter
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 America’s hunters and anglers, including the great icons like Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold, our nation would not have the tradition of sound game management, a system of ethical, science-based game laws and an extensive public lands estate on which to pursue the sport. Obama recognizes that we must forge a broad coalition if we are to address the great conservation challenges we face. America’s hunters and anglers are a key constituency that must take an active role and have a powerful voice in this coalition.Below this section of political doublespeak is yet another hyperlink one must click on to "Read the full plan" - in which we finally see yet another paragraph falsely labelled "PROTECTING GUN RIGHTS":
Respect the Second Amendment: Millions of hunters own and use guns each year. Millions more participate in a variety of shooting sports such as sporting clays, skeet, target and trap shooting that may not necessarily involve hunting. As a former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he greatly respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting. He also believes that the right is subject to reasonable and commonsense regulation.That last sentence is the kicker. Just what constitutes "reasonable and just commonsense regulation" is, of course, different things to different people. For the liberal, it usually means extremely intrusive government control of the citizens' firearms. More on this in a moment, but first consider that Obama and his team have pushed gun control to the bottom of their site's "Issues" menu, and grouped it under the topic of "Additional Issues" along with such other items as "Arts" and "Transportation" - hardly a place of promenence for a right that the founders felt deserved its own constitutional amendment. This perceived unimportance of firarms-related issues is a big clue about how the Obama campaign views the right to keep and bear arms, and it is but one source of the inexperienced junior Senator's problem with America's millions of gun owners - or, rather, their problem with him.
That Obama, "a former constitutional law professor" - brags his website, sees gun rights as a hunting and shooting sports issue reveals a lack of understanding of the fundamental reason the founders sought to guarantee these rights in the first place. As the NRA's John Sigler points out, "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting." But most firearms owners already knew that. Alan Keyes explains:
The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.When we dig into Barack Obama's record of votes, other actions and public statements on gun control, we learn that he isn't so much about "protecting gun rights" as he is about trying to constrain those same rights.
According to a Kenneth Vogel article on Politico:
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away their guns.For gun owners and RKBA advocates, this isn't exactly a good start for Obama. It gets worse.But before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions.
The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners’ rights, as well as two groups that advocated handgun bans. And it paid to support a book called “Every Handgun Is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.”
The Associated Press, in a story about how Obama's far-left voting record is a gold mine for his critics, reported that:
Obama regularly supported gun-control measures, including a ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons" and a limit on handgun purchases to one a month.Now I know that I'm a second amendment absolutist, and that liberals who don't get the reason the founders put that amendment in the Bill of Rights will view me as a right-wing gun nut. But does anyone else see the act of voting to prevent a homeowner from proteting his or her family and property while in his or her own home is more than just a little extereme?He also opposed letting people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation.
Supporters framed the issue as a fundamental question of whether homeowners have the right to protect themselves.
Obama joined several Chicago Democrats who argued the measure could open loopholes letting gun owners use their weapons on the street. They said local governments should have the final say, but the self-defense exception passed 41-16 and ultimately became state law.
Next we have Obama's remark to a gathering of wealthy San Francisco liberal elites, spoken without the knowledge that it was actually being recorded:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."Obama and his campaign have desperately tried to spin their way out of that one, but as Bill Clinton, himself a master of spin, was fond of saying, "That dog don't hunt.""And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Like he does on so many other issues, Obama attempts to hide his liberal gun control beliefs behind phony, moderate-sounding rhetoric that is intended to pull the wool over the eyes of a largely unsuspecting electorate. Fortunately, those who see gun ownership as as a bulwark against some possible future tyranny from our own federal government aren't falling for the deception.
John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, relates this chilling encounter in an opinion piece dealing with a questionnaire Obama and/or his staff answered for the Independent Voters of Illinois (IVI):
In fact, I knew Obama during the mid-1990s, and his answers to IVI’s question on guns fit well with the Obama that I knew. Indeed, the first time I introduced myself to him he said “Oh, you are the gun guy.”“I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns,” bottom-lines Barack Obama's true feelings about gun control. I'm not the only one who finds this Obama guy extremist-scary.I responded “Yes, I guess so.” He simply responded that “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.”
When I said it might be fun to talk about the question sometime and about his support of the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against the gun makers, he simply grimaced and turned away, ending the conversation.
If taken literally, Obama’s statement to me was closer to what the IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test found, indicating that Obama's bans would extend well beyond handguns.
Obama also opposes the current laws in 48 states that let citizens carry concealed handguns for protection claiming, despite all the academic studies to the contrary, that "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."
National Rifle Association president John Sigler, in a scathing column in the NRA's Official Journal, sees Obama as a genuine and serious threat to freedom:
Barack Obama’s position is even more anti-gun than the District of Columbia’s! Obama’s record is clear—his concept of “hope and change” will surely result in anti-gun/anti-freedom changes bringing more hopelessness for the most helpless in our society.Amen, Mr. Sigler. Amen.Now is the time to act! Every gun owner in America must be alerted to Obama’s record. Please, tear out this page, copy it and distribute it to fellow gun owners, hunters, shooters, family and friends. Spread the word and get ready for the most important election battle of our lifetime.
- JP
Barack Off Obama is a typical politician, saying anything, even if it is not true, to get elected.
Question Obama’s integrity?
That’s impossible, he doesn’t have any.
I’m so sick of Dems responding to Second Amendment questions with, “Well I’m for Hunters and sportsmen, if it weren’t for them blah blah...”.
What about the individual who owns a gun to defend himself from others who would do him harm? What about the gun owners who own weapons to keep government power in check? What are you going to say to them Obama? Oh, we don’t need to worry about that, the government will keep us safe at night...
The Second Amendment is not about hunting or sport shooting.
We already know that he is an America-hating gun grabbing communist racist looter from the most corrupt political machine in the nation. His desire to ban all guns so that criminals like him can have a free reign on honest people is quite apparent to anyone with half a brain. Any claims that he respects gun rights are plain lies.
McCain is not the greatest, but he is definitely not an Obama when it comes to the Second Amendment.
With any luck what Obama thinks will be made moot by SCOTUS in the next month or so.
If he gets in look out for the big suction of guns going out the doors of gun shops .... and your local Wal-Mar .....
Again, and again, and, AGAIN!!!
The 2nd Amendment isn’t about duck hunting!
This issue alone, will doom this communist’s crusade for the Presidency!
As indeed it should!
Ditto. The 2nd used to be my number one issue, it was the issue that got me interested in politics. It was right after the Columbine shootings, I was a teen at the time and had paid scarce attention to anything to do with politics. I quickly learned how not only was it mainly the democrats who were pushing gun control, but the dems also happened to support most everything else I naturally disagreed with. In the aftermath of the Columbine shootings I also discovered media bias, while watching all of the TV networks and CNN(those were my only sources of news at the time). I saw how Clinton and the other dems would go on TV distorting and lying about firearms ownership and gun control, and then watching the media repeat the talking points as if they were the truth, all of their reporting was based on a biased premise created by those talking points. A year later I was bored, looking for news on the radio, and discovered Rush. I've been a libertarian minded conservative ever since.
Now years later, after the dems have gotten their asses thoroughly beaten over the years, losing many congressional seats and two presidential elections, largely because of their position on gun control, they have went from talking about bans 10 years ago to loving "hunters and sportsmen". Now the liberals are taking a slower approach to gun control; divide and conquer. They apparently feel if they can separate the hunters from other gun owners, painting the other gun owners as extremists, they can gain some headway. As gun owners, we all need to stick together, and support 2nd amendment political organizations, continue to own guns, and VOTE accordingly. I'm waiting to hear more from McCain on how he feels regarding gun control. I believe his past on gun control may be dubious.
(Wow. I didn't click the reply button with the intention of telling you a story. lol)
I disagree that BHO and the lefties don’t know that the 2nd Amendment is not about hunting and sport, they know perfectly well it is about freedom from tyranny. And they are tyrants. They may let you bear arms under strict conditions, maybe you’ll have to check your Daisy air rifle in and out, but maybe not keep them in your own home. Legal gun owners are law abiding. When they come to take our weapons, we will hand them over. I don’t recall a single case in the mass confiscation after Hurricane Katrina of them having to pry a gun out of any owner’s cold, dead hands.
Well, you're not nearly as sick of them as I am of Republicans who are too cowardly to speak up and call them on those comments for the liars they are...
When is the last time you head a Republican official state "the Second Amendment is not about hunting or sporting use, it's about freedom and the unalienable right of free citizens to have the means to cast off a government when it becomes oppressive..."
In my recent memory the only public person I can recall who emphatically articulated this essential truth was Fred Thompson during his abortive campaign. There have been others in the past, however, even Democrats (back in the days when Democrats weren't actually totalitarian socialists):
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." Sen. Hubert Humphrey, "Know Your Lawmakers", Guns Magazine, Page 4, Feb. 1960.
We have no such leaders today. Our culture and our political process is now so corrupted and degraded that any political aspirant who clearly stated something such as this would be "weeded-out" before they ever attained high office.
What about the 'effecting change within our government' purpose part of the 2nd?
They can squawk all they want. We remain, your truly, armed. I'll not disarm voluntarily. They can pound sand.
/johnny
Speak for yourself. I'm old and grumpy. I have NOTHING to lose, except my country and self-respect.
/johnny
At that point I will no longer be law abbiding.I am a son of the American revolution and I will kill the first person that tries to disarm me. I don’t care at my age to roll over anymore freedom.They will kill me too but I will die a free man.
The 2d Amendment is to ensure that citizens have the right to hunt down and dispose of tyranny.
They can have my guns after and as long as they take all the bullets that come with the guns...
That's right - it's all about varmints...
of the politicianus Washingtonensis variety...
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