Seeing Is Not Believing
Obama goes to Pennsylvania and cannot even convince a hand-picked crowd that he will respect the rights of gun owners:
............ A woman in the crowd [in Duryea, PA] told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”
“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.
So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’...............
Oh, I think they heard the words coming out of his mouth. But maybe they have also captured the flavor of all the other words and flip-flops, especially with the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Washington DC gun ban. Here is Jacob Sullum at Reason:
..........Obama's past positions on gun control and recent statements about gun rights provide little reason to believe he takes the Second Amendment seriously. And as I've argued, it's hard to see what meaningful restrictions the Second Amendment imposes on gun control if something like the D.C. law can pass constitutional muster...........
Marc Ambinder:
..........It's true that Obama regularly says and has said that he interprets the 2nd amendment to hold secure an individual's right to bear arms while being constrained by the rights of the community to "maintain public safety," as he put it today.
It's just that, with regard to the DC law, it seems clear that Obama was OK with how DC government balanced those rights and is now OK with the see-saw swinging in the other direction............
Waffles served by AllahPundit at Hot Air. Straight reporting of the Obamafuscations here.
C'mon - Obama is a conventional urban lib who has never seen a gun control proposal that went too far. If he thought he had the votes and wasn't committing political suicide, he would favor a gun ban tomorrow.
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thks to LB |
