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When Gov. Palin stated in her NRA speech Friday that Obama would ban guns if he could, you could almost hear the collective(-ist) heads of the hysterical left explode in unison. They immediately fired up their mommies' or daddies' computers and madly blogged that such a notion was ridiculous and patently impossible. The reason most often given was that the Second Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution, and Obama would not dare to even
think of treading upon it so heavily. Which is some strange reasoning, given how little respect the neosocialist-in-chief has demonstrated for the Constitution on his watch.
Sarah Palin shot down the outraged left's arguments with some very compelling evidence in
this Facebook commentary. In addition to Obama's own statements and his voting record in the Illinois state Senate, Gov. Palin cited a questionnaire from the Independent Voters of Illinois (IVI), to which Obama expressed his support for state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”
But as John Locke pointed out in an
opinion piece in April of 2008, "the IVI questionnaire isn’t the only one out there":
In 1998, another questionnaire administered by IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test didn’t ask about banning all handguns, but it did find that Obama wanted to “ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.”
Indeed, such a ban would outlaw virtually all handguns and the vast majority of rifles sold in the United States.
In addition, from 1998 to 2001, Obama was on the board of directors for the Joyce Foundation, which funded such anti-gun groups as the Violence Policy Center, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, and Handgun Free America. Both the Violence Policy Center and Handgun Free America, as its name suggests, are in favor of a complete ban on handguns. During his tenure on the board, the Joyce Foundation was probably the major funder of pro-control research in the United States.
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 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.
Again, Obama said to Locke,
“I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns” (Emphasis ours). With Obama admitting to such radical thinking, there's no question that Sarah Palin was right to say that he would ban guns
if he could. Fortunately, he knows that that he can't get away with it for many reasons, the first 80 million of which are America's firearm owners.
- JP
