The Obama Gun Grab Myth

Americans right now live in a country that is taxed less and has fewer restrictions on gun ownership than it did under George W. Bush.

The “Barack Obama is Gonna Take Your Guns” bogeyman took another hit Monday, as the Supreme Court overturned Chicago’s 28-year ban on handguns, reaffirming the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.

Combined with the Court’s 2008 decision to overturn Washington DC’s handgun ban, the fact that 48 states now have some form of concealed carry permitting, and the current Democratic Congress’ vote to allow guns in federal parks—which was signed into law by President Obama last year—Americans are unexpectedly living through a gun rights renaissance.


But don’t tell that to the fear-mongering-for-fun-and-profit crowd. Facts would screw up their ability to scare people into anti-Obama activism.

READ MORE:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-29/supreme-court-ruling-obama-is-not-coming-for-your-guns/?cid=hp:mainpromo9

I challange you to support your insinuation.

A vast majority of states have shall-issue concealed carry, which is far beyond what the Supreme Court ruled in this case. And how has that worked out over the decades that many of those states have had concealed carry? Crime has plummeted.

Chicago can only fantasize about a crime rate like the old West.

All your premises are false; all your arguments are belong to us.

most of the nation has seen its murder rate decline 40% over the past couple of decades.

If you don't think lawful and responsible gun ownership is mainstream in the United States, you must be living either under a rock, or in one of those rare anti-gun enclaves that thinks it's representative of the USA at large.

Like kow-towing to the NRA and the gun lobby.

(1) Admit he is wrong about his view of the Second Amendment;
(2) Work to eliminate the call for a permanent and expanded "assault weapons ban" which STILL exists in the platform.

There's nothing like official written documentation to "keep myths alive."

I think that was back in his ConLaw professor days. I've been trying to find that quote again recently but it seems to have gone down the memory hole.

And on his website during the campaign said that it would be one of his administrations goals to reinstate the failed "assault weapons ban".

edit to add, see post #10

However, he's highly intelligent and knows it's a losing issue, and will only hurt his party.

That's the whole point behind lifetime appointments for justices.

When Obama comes out and commends this decision (or even acknowledges it) then maybe people can start to look past his long history of pissing on 2A rights.

helped Rethugs as a wedge issue since the 90's.

"Fear and hate are cheap and easy recruiting tools. But they can result in a divided, dispirited and somewhat deranged nation, unable to agree even on a common set of facts when it diverges from a dominant narrative. If someone believes that the government is coming to seize their guns, news of Supreme Court cases seem distant and intellectual compared to emotional appeals by their favorite opinion-anchor."


He uses spin to push the idea that the recent SCOTUS cases have solved everything and we can all sit around the campfire with marshmallows. Guess he's never heard of Mayor Daley.

thinks nobody will read between the lines, much less check out his credentials.

Where do they find these people?

at what he has said and the way he has voted in the past.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30389664/

http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/IL_2004_Senate_3rd_Gun_Control.htm

And this one details his voting record in Illinois on the issue. While I do not care for the way the site is set up, all the claimed facts are footnoted.

http://www.gunbanobama.com/Default.aspx?NavGuid=530ecfa4-ae4e-4819-97e6-892463d99f08

that fact however is a mystery.

First on his website as a candidate, through the transition and which only quietly disappeared a few months ago.

http://obama.3cdn.net/84b2062fc4a5114715_ftxamv9ot.pdf



Read that again, "FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS in the hands of criminals" are a problem he proposes to solve by banning guns that are not fully automatic and not in the hands of criminals.

Again, how much more directly or more plainly can he say he wants to reinstate a ban on semiautomatic weapons by implying they are machineguns?

There can only be two explanations for making that statement. It was a deliberate attempt to deceive people who don't know the difference. Or he doesn't know the difference himself. Deceit or dumb-ass, take your pick!

All of his pro-gun statements came as damage control AFTER his crack about Pennsylvania voters "bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles" at a "private" San Francisco fund-raiser became public. Even so far as to a newly found belief that the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

I will give him credit for two things:

1. He did sign legislation restoring the rules for concealed weapons to align with the state laws of the state where a National Park is located, as they had been prior to 1982. That it was attached to a credit card reform bill he desperately wanted tempers my enthusiasm. But seeing as how LEGAL concealed carry in the National Parks had not been a problem for the first century and a half of their existence it was pretty likely to remain that way after the repeal of a Reagan era rule.

2. He quickly squelched talk about reinstating the expired Assault Weapons Ban after the trial balloons floated by both the Attorney General and the Secretary of State a year and a half ago. For the time being, at least, no more talk about 'machineguns in Chicago' as that was quietly removed from the White House website in May.

Clearly, based on his own words and his voting record, the President has only grudgingly kept his own counsel concerning future plans for further gun restrictions. He is certainly shrewd enough a politician to see that the momentum of public opinion is not on his side on this issue. He appears unwilling to risk a repeat the 1994 debacle where, as Bill Clinton now freely admits, the backlash vaporized a forty year lock on Congress. He certainly suspects that his only foreseeable opportunity will come as a 'lame duck.' When that time comes where he no longer has to worry about re-election it will be interesting to see if he is also willing to saddle the rest of Party by reinforcing 'Democrats as gun-grabbers' meme.

The NRA is like pastors to the right wing. They believe them without researching anything.

Or people who believe that Title 2 restricted military automatic weapons, SBR's, and M203's are being bought at U.S. gun shows and smuggled into Mexico? Or the people who believe that AR-15's and civilian AK's are a big crime problem in this country, or that protruding rifle handgrips are designed for hip-shooting, because the repubs at the Brady Campaign tell them so?

Yeah, there's a lot of that uncritical acceptance going around...

FWIW, the concerns over the Obama/Biden ticket on guns were primarily related to their prior statements regarding the "assault weapon" bait-and-switch (primarily by Mr. Biden), a cause which even the center-left American Hunters and Shooters Association thinks is counterproductive baloney, and the DLC-driven plank in the party platform relating to same. Fortunately Obama has put the kibosh on the AWB as President, and that has done Dems a world of good.

leave some low-hanging fruit for the rest of us.

You'd take it as gospel truth.

:rofl:

Must you be so provincial?

:rofl:

:nuke:

Bet you a dollar. He'll get up to some other mischief, but it'll end this mess.

always looking back at Sodom.

and job description.

Obama has too many connections to the Chicago machine.

1. 'I no longer support renewing the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban or similar legislation.'
2. 'I will work to implement the findings of the court in the Heller and McDonald cases.'

That's all I need, and I'll never even bother to visit this forum again. I'll go hang out in economy, or environment. It would be a done deal, and he would have 100% of my support.

It would only take an hour or two of his time. Dress it up with some 'the legal understanding of the 2nd has changed' blah blah, 'my former position on Change.gov with regards to firearms is outdated' blah blah. Done.

It's not hard.

in politics.

Well, we can dream, I suppose.

...still waiting...

When I'm concerned that a certain event is going to occur, and take steps to prevent it from occurring, and it does indeed not occur, does that mean my initial concern was misplaced? That the thing I feared was a "myth"?

I remain convinced that the Obama administration was perfectly prepared to try for a renewed, permanent ban on the manufacture and importation of so-called "assault weapons" at least up to the moment Pelosi pulled Holder up short, presumably hissing something in his ear to the effect that, while he might not be facing re-election in 2010, she'd see him looking for new employment if he fucked it up for those who were.

Pressure from Democrats in Congress, combined with massive sales of semi-automatics following Obama's election, made it clear to the administration that the envisioned restrictions on gun rights would cost more political capital than the administration had to spend.

And the headline relies on something of a straw man in that only a fringe of gun owners (actual or prospective) and gun rights activists really thought Obama was going to try to confiscate any firearms already owned (albeit a quite voluble fringe). Would you seriously spend money on an item you expected was going to confiscated? But clearly quite few people anticipated the possibility of no longer being able to buy AR-15s and the like, and not being able to acquire something you don't already possess is, for practical purposes, the same as not being able to own it.

As if that "moving forward" mumbo-jumbo somehow denatures politics into something inert. Ha! Give the right wing their do. They have disdain for stuff like pragmatism; yet we progs & libs give 'em the stuff they most detest, like there is a market for it somewhere out there.

I ain't buyin' either.