10/14/2008

New Op-ed with the Philadelphia Inquirer: Taking aim at Obama's stance on gun control: The candidate says he supports the right to bear arms. The rec

My new piece starts off this way:

Barack Obama claims he is a friend of gun owners. He certainly has convinced the media.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times said the NRA's opposition to Obama seemed strange because "Obama does not oppose gun rights. He has made a point of pounding this home to rural audiences, telling them he has no intention of taking their guns away: not their shotguns, not their handguns, not anything."

From the Boston Globe to FactCheck.org, the media and their watchdogs have uncritically recited Obama's statement that he believes there is an individual right to own guns. How does Brooks Jackson, FactCheck.org's director, explain the NRA's opposition to Obama? He says: "They are lying. . . . They are just making this up."

Yet, while the media and their checkers take Obama's current statements about his beliefs at face value, the NRA doesn't. So who is right? . . .


On Wednesday the piece is still the most viewed piece among the Philly Inquirer op-eds.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...he has no intention of taking their guns away: not their shotguns, not their handguns, not anything."

That's quite an expansive claim from the LA Times. Every time I've heard Obama on the subject, he only says he won't take our rifles and shotguns. So he's offering to let us keep the long guns we already have, though he says nothing about having to render them inoperable, as was done in the UK. He specifically omits handguns and ammunition from his claims, and since he voted to ban ammunition for the .30-30, I wouldn't trust him to take "not anything". The LA Times makes those claims for him, but I haven't heard Obama make those claims.
Obama has done much against gun owners, but I know of nothing that he has done for them. He has done much to oppose the Second Amendment, but he has taken no action to support it.
He is now mouthing lukewarm support for the Second Amendment in an effort to get elected, but even under the pressure of a tight contest, he still can't quite bring himself to support gun rights.

10/14/2008 8:47 AM  
Blogger The Right Guy said...

John,
By your own blog post: http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2008/09/obama-campaign-tries-to-get-nra-ads.html
We know Obama is no friend of gun owners. It would seem that Obama is someone that does not tolerate dissent or differing world views, in spite of the fact he paints himself as a champion of bipartisanship. I would assert that if you want to know what Obama really thinks, pour through his wife's speeches. There's a reason they've kept her quiet all these months and that is she can't help but tell the truth, which is inconsistent with his public persona.

10/14/2008 10:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When Chicago had a total ban on handguns, where was Obama? If he believes in gun owner rights, why wasn't he shouting at the top of his lungs that his city's prohibition was an unconstitutional infringement of civil rights? Twenty years of silence on this issue alone reveals him as the dinsingenuous politician he is. Someone ask him at the debate if he would appoint Sup. Court justices who would honor HELLER and apply that decision to the states. /ss/ rick v.

10/15/2008 3:19 PM  

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