What is Obama backpedalling from? He’s saying the exact same thing now he’s always said. He has always said he believes the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right. In what way do you believe that he’s changed?
Oceana is at war with Eurasia. It has always been at war with Eurasia.
I can show you the quotes of him saying that before yesterday. Are you alleging that he’s never said that before?
His voting record is a much more eloquent statement of his feelings on the matter than mere words.
Obama has indeed said before this that he believes the amendment protects an individual right. However, this has not made him the friend of gun rights advocates, since he has shown by his statements and actions that he thinks the only thing really protected is the individual right to own hunting rifles. He is opposed to concealed carry, he has supported “assault weapon” bans, and he has in fact supported the banning of all semiautomatic firearms.
Taken in light of his extensively anti-gun history, his lip service to the Second Amendment seems pretty empty.
Ya i got that , the right to keep and bear arms . I just did not see anything in his statement that agreed with that. All I parsed from it was that he agreed that the supremes weighed in on the topic and he has put his own spin on the way he sees the judgement. To me he just sat on the fence and said something non commital.
[johnny5]need more input[/johnny5]
Declan
And once the criminal element really gets armed, so will yours, but in a different sense.
Really, this Euro-Superior thing gets me in a twist sometimes.
“Oh, if only there were no weapons, everything would be peachy-keen!!!111twentyfive”.
That assertion, which is the thesis of your post and a definitive logical fallacy, is so far beneath SDMB standards as not even to merit a rebuttal.
First, let’s set aside the ghastly recoil that one cannot help but experience at the notion of a powerful group of lobbyists helping elected lawmakers draft legislation. We can be grateful, I guess, that NAMBLA isn’t helping draft our child protection laws.
But more to the point, let’s not paint a false picture of benevolent rights advocates descending from on high to serve the will of Congress with gladness. The fact is that the NRA was dragged kicking and screaming into the process after Democrats took over the Congress, and Seung Hui Cho murdered 32 people and wounded 25 others at Virginia Tech University in April, 2007. The NRA had always opposed giving states time to find out if gun purchasers were criminals, idiots, children, or mental or emotional defectives. In fact, in 2004, it aimed its barrels at John Kerry in part because he “voted in 1993 to specifically allow the continuation of state waiting periods after the advent of the National Instant Check system” despite that it knew that the NICS was massively flawed. And there was nothing benevolent about its participation with Congress, as it used its considerable political weight and influence to squeeze “significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks”, according to the Washington Post. Neither was it a matter of moral highground, inasmuch as incentive for states to participate was a $250 million per year pie. States do not have to participate, and can drop out at any time. Vermont never even dropped in at all.
Of course, the point of my post wasn’t about the parenthetical remark that you addressed. It was about the NRA branding John McCain as an obstacle to its missions, and the lukewarm reception it gave him at its West Virginia gathering.
What do you mean “again”? You haven’t asked anything about head-nodding, and what you have asked, I’ve answered. Since there’s no reason to believe you will acknowledge this response either, I write it for the benefit of those who are actually reading it. First of all, nodding and saying, “Right, right…” typically signifies nothing more than the fact that you’re hearing and understanding the question — not that you are agreeing with selected particulars as the air waves waft by. His opposition was to “illegal guns”, which means guns that are in violation of some statutory authority.
What this means to me is that he places, above all, the Constitution and how it is interpreted by the courts, which at that time had not struck down the law. It is a goddamn refreshing change to hear a potential president defer to the document that he will be called upon to preserve, protect, and defend — not his own opinion of it, but the opinion of the judicial branch. If we simply must be denied all rights save those prescripted by ancient scribblers, then it is at least some solace that the person enforcing them does not consider himself to be exempt from them.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy notwithstanding, if you examine their core philosophies, they are remarkably similar to those of the Brady Campaign. So similar, in fact, that the AHSA has received the endorsement of the Brady Campaign.
Given that the Brady Campaign has been the primary antagonists with regard to gun rights in this country, I would not characterize the AHSA endorsement of Obama as one that will withstand too much scrutiny. Hell, let’s take a look at their own webpage:
This is but a small example of what I’m talking about. The mischaracterizations of the NRA’s positions, the parroting of the Brady Campaign’s talking points, the meaningless platitudes… for someone like me it’s like meeting a guy who speaks the same language but is nevertheless totally incomprehensible.
Well, fine. That one sentence did in fact go too far. The rest of it stands as fact.
Why should you be surprised at this? It happens quite a bit. We cannot expect our representatives to understand in great detail every single detail about every issue they face. For this they turn both in their own research and in their committee work to experts - and these come from various groups indeed, often from both sides of an issue, and try to make their opinions known as much as possible.
Do they get involved to the level of drafting proposed legislation? Of course. But without sufficient backing on the hill, it won’t go anywhere. And I dare say if it was a group you favored and legislation you liked, you’d have no issue with it.
Look, you can have your criticisms of the NICS, but you can’t say the NRA had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the process, since in fact they had lobbied extensively for the NICS in the first place. I’d call that being involved - and being involved to the point of advocating records checks.