Flashback–Obama, Circa 1990s: 'I Don't Believe People Should Be Able to Own Guns'

During the 2008 presidential campaign, gun rights author and scholar John Lott recounted meeting Barack Obama for the first time while he was a lecturer at University of Chicago.  

When the two met, Lott’s reputation on guns preceded him, and Lott claims Obama said, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”

Read that again, and let it soak in; Barack Obama reportedly said, “I don’t think people should be able to own guns.” In my correspondence with Lott, he stood by his story.

And there’s little reason to doubt Lott’s account, especially when you take Obama’s history of anti-gun legislation into account.

Consider these examples:

1. In a 1998 questionnaire for the Illinois state legislature, Obama said he wanted to “ban the sale or transfer of all sorts of semi-automatic weapons.”

2. From 1998-2001 Obama was on the board of the Joyce Foundation, the “major funder for gun-control research” at that time.

3. Obama opposes concealed carry and always has (every state but Illinois disagrees with him).

4. Obama only sees two “legitimate” purposes for guns: “hunting and target shooting.” This means using guns for self defense is not legitimate. And this goes a long way in explaining Obama’s past support of laws banning the use of guns for self-defense in Illinois, even in one’s own home.

But all these things and more are simply symptoms of a bigger issue–namely, that Obama doesn’t think people should be able to own guns in the first place.

Lott believes Obama’s lip service to the Second Amendment is simply part of an overarching Democrat strategy set forth by pollster Mark Penn, which instructs Dems to say they support the Second Amendment in order get elected and then to do everything they can to chip away at it via legislation and regulation once they’re in office.