From Andrew Romano at Newsweek:
The National Rifle Association plans to spend about $40 million on this year’s presidential campaign, with $15 million of that devoted to portraying Obama as a threat to voters’ Second Amendment rights.
That would seem to be at best a waste of $15 million and at worst a disingenuous and false line of attack. The reason why is because of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding an individual’s right to own a gun, so even if Obama wanted to take away guns, he can’t because the Supreme Court says so.
Here’s what Obama told the Web site www.ontheissues.org about his views on guns:
Because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.
And because of the Supreme Court decision, there’s an opening for some measures of local gun control, although the Court left a vague interpretation of what would be constitutional. Obama is talking about cracking down on illegal handgun use and loopholes in background checks … not exactly a widespread government gun grab. Plus, since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in June, it’s essentially a non-issue in this campaign, eclipsed by the economy and health care and, in case anybody has forgotten, two foreign wars meant to make our country safer.
