On April 13, The Daily Beast (TDB) reacted to the NRA’s Nashville convention by accusing Wayne LaPierre of “lying” in telling NRA members that Obama and the Democrats want to take guns away.
In fact, Obama is not even anti-gun–according to TDB–and he made his support for the Second Amendment clear in 2008.
According to TDB, “No one in the Obama administration or any Democrat administration has ever tried to take law-abiding citizens’ guns away.” Moreover, TDB said, Obama “can’t” take guns, even if he wanted to, because the Supreme Court decided there is an individual right to keep and bear arms in 2008.
Before then, the 2nd Amendment was apparently the only amendment in the Bill of Rights that was collective rather than individual, which is strange, considering the fact that the basis for every right in the Bill of Rights is God, not government, and the exercise of every right has been individual since the Bill of Rights was ratified.
But TDB claimed the NRA is lying and has been lying about Obama since he began campaigning for president in 2008. For instance, TDB said the NRA opposed Obama’s run by “publicly [claiming] that Obama wanted to ‘ban the use of firearms for home self defense’ and ‘ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.’ That was simply and utterly a fabrication by the NRA.”
However, on October 28, 2010, Human Events reported that “Obama endorsed a complete ban on all handguns” in a general candidate questionnaire from September 9, 1995. In that same questionnaire, he supported “waiting periods” for gun purchasers–which means you go to buy a gun on Monday but you don’t get to take it home until Saturday, five days later. This means if you’re a woman seeking a gun because you are being pursued by an attacker on Monday, you have to hole up or hide and hope for the best until Saturday.
Moreover, as an Illinois lawmaker, Obama supported laws that made the use of handguns for self-defense illegal by making the very possession of a handgun illegal.
Human Events published this synopsis of other aspects of Obama’s voting record as an Illinois state senator:
He supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park (which is tantamount to banning gun stores period); he supported H.B. 2579, which prohibited law-abiding individuals from purchasing more than one gun a month; he opposed laws that permitted law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for self-defense (i.e., he opposed concealed carry permits); he supported a ban on “junk guns” (cheaper guns that poor people could actually afford to buy and use for self defense); and he voted not to inform gun owners when the state of Illinois did records searches on them (S.B. 1936).
While President, Obama has stepped up his push, supporting a ban on “high capacity” magazines, an “assault weapons” ban, an AR-15 ammo ban, and an invasive scheme of expanded background checks as proposed by gun control Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV).
As recently as March 9, at South Carolina’s Benedict College, Obama continued to assail “the easy, ready, availability of firearms, particularly handguns.”
And TDB’s best comeback is, the NRA is ‘lying’?
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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