I’ve heard it said in other threads by pkbites that Obama seeks to ban all semi-automatic weapons if he is elected. Wikipedia says that he voted in favor of the “assault weapons” ban long ago, and that he was given a grade of F by the gun rights organizations (so was McCain, for what it’s worth.) But is this really an indication that he is planning on actively pursuing a ban on semi-automatic weapons if he becomes president.
I’ve said in other threads that I’m 100% pro-gun, I believe that it’s true that only criminals will have guns if guns are outlawed, I think that the people who are actually interested in guns and pursue them as a hobby are very very different than the people who use them to commit crimes, but above all, I think that it’s unfair that the government should be the only entity that has the power. I.E. they’ve got M1 tanks, Stealth bombers and enough nuclear warheads to reduce the planet to smithereens - I think I should be able to own an SKS rifle and shoot it at a firing range.
Enough about my positions. Those are my firm beliefs and absolutely nothing is going to change them. What I’m interested in is how opposed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and for that matter John McCain are to that philosophy, and how likely it is that if they become president, I will be unable to purchase a semi-automatic rifle if I so desire.
[quote]
From the linked site: Principles that Obama supports on gun issues:
[ul]
[li]Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.[/li][li]Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.[/li][li]Require manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms.[/ul][/li][/quote]
It lists 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test Jul 2, 1998 as the source for this information, but I’m curious as to how this information was actually retrieved. Did he answer yes to a question that asked “Would you ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons?” Was his viewpoint extrapolated from his responses in general?
I’d personally like to see more information about this source before coming to any conclusion.
I believe this is a copy of Obama’s responses to the 1998 Illinois NPAT:
Here is the question about gun control:
Indicate which principles you support (if any) concerning gun issues.
X a) Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
X b) Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
c) Maintain state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
d) Ease state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
e) Repeal state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens.
f) Favor allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms.
X g) Require manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms.
h) Other
So, it looks like he explicitly marked the “ban the sale or transfer of semi-automatic weapons” response.
Some things to take into consideration, though:
[list=“1”]
[li] These responses are from the 1998 NPAT[/li][li] I don’t know what the implications are for the “or transfer” qualifier of that response[/li][li] I don’t know if this can be stretched to say that he would “actively pursue” introducing legislation to achieve this[/li][/list]
What do you guys think?
I think gun control has become somewhat passe since it cost the democrats control of the House back in the 1990s. Followed by the 9/11 attacks.
Right now, it’s somewhere between forced busing and affirmative action in terms of popularity. So I would say that your semi-automatic rifle is safe for the time being.
That’s one of the few things that keeps me from actually registering as a Democrat. How is banning or highly restricting guns “liberal”?
For the record I don’t own any guns (and I could if I wanted to - elders of my family have repeatedly tried to give them to me), and I don’t particularly like them, but I deserve the right to own them.
So what you’re all saying is he was pro-automatic weapons ban but now he’s not? He wiffle-waffles and doesn’t have the political courage to take a firm stance on a contentious and important issue?
I’ve always been baffled by that one as well (as a left-leaning indie who accepts the broad implications of the 2nd Amendment). I guess that to certain liberals (Broad Brush warning) there are no such things as internal choices, all seeming “choices” that a person makes are always and forever completely determined by outside influences. Put a gun in a kid’s hand and he automatically turns into a rampaging suihomicidal loner-choice or character is nothing compared to the seducing feel of the cold hard steel in his hands. Put a cop’s cap on Elmer Fudd and he automatically turns into a policeman (or thinks he’s one). Equally silly but that’s the mindset I think.
They just mostly don’t understand guns, I think. If you’re someone who has no experience with guns at all, of course you’ll be scared of them - your only view of them will come from action movies where guys are, say, constantly firing round after round after round from automatic weapons without ever changing the magazine, or firing giant machine guns one-handed, and a lot of other stupid shit.
Well, I’m whooshing a little, but the Hilleryhaters love to find something she may have changed her mind about, start foaming at the mouth and scream about what a lying bitch she is. It’s tiring. Meanwhile, Obama’s farts apparently smell like fresh-baked cookies.
As for gun control being a significant issue, my own anecdevidence says a lot of people I know would be more willing to throw down over it than gay rights, medical insurance or the war in Iraq. A lot of people really do have a “from my cold, dead hands” attitude about their guns, and whether they’re semi-automatic means not one whit.
Or keeping guns out of kids hands reduces the odds of them accidentally shooting each other by about 100 percent. Or making it at least a little more difficult for a would-be mass murderer to get automatic weapons might just give him time to cool off, or for the meds to kick in, or for someone to intervene. I’m not arguing for gun control here as much as I’m arguing against assigning people silly beliefs like “put a gun into a kid’s hand and he automatically turns into a rampaging siuhomicidal loner” and then dismissing them as silly.
This, now, this is about something that matters. Whether you are allowed to own an assault weapon or not does not matter.
Why is this even an issue?
Very, very bad reason. A government that does not have an effective internal monopoly on armed force is hardly a government at all. And you can’t possibly think you can fight the Army or the National Guard or even your local police with small arms.
I’m more or less happy with the situation we have now. People are allowed to own semi-automatic weapons. The government is still able to maintain control. Everything is fine.
As for why anybody should give a rat’s ass, well, different people care about different things. Why should anything matter to anybody? I think an AK-47 is a fascinating piece of machinery and an artifact of military and political history, and I would like very much to own one and fire it at a shooting range. If I’m not allowed to legally do that, then it’s an issue to me, and I give a rat’s ass about it. See?
My view on this is that conservatives (and I don’t mean Bush and crew) view rights as “government is evil, rights must be defended and protected against them” whereas the socialistic view is “government is benevolent, rights will be granted by them”.
Guns in the minds of a lot of people, pro and con, are the ultimate sign of rugged individualism. Socialism abhors rugged individualism - people who not only don’t rely on the government but actively buck the system are problems. Conservatism (and like I said, I don’t mean the fascist jingoistic current Republican party) embraces individuals who don’t rely on the government and are willing to buck the system.
John DiFool has a point. The “no one is ever responsible for their actions” crowd (which highly correlates with “liberals”) has to blame some external factor on anything anyone does that’s wrong. In the case of crime, one of the things that receives the blame is the guns, as if guns were the causitive factor in violence or crime, rather than a tool. Watching biased news reports against guns, you might think that they occasionally sprout legs and go shoot people on their own. So in their view, getting rid of guns can cure the underlying problem and we’ll all form one big group hug with sunshine and lollipops.
Practically, it’s a bad issue for the democrats. They’ve already got the votes of people who care deeply about the anti-gun issue. Psychotic morons like Sarah Brady are going to vote democrat regardless. There are more people who feel strongly on the other side, the pro-gun side. A lot of those lean republican anyway, but I’ve met quite a few who don’t like the way the republicans are going but feel obligated to go that way because gun rights is their number one issue. Now, practically, that’s stupid, because republicans haven’t been gun-friendly either, and those people accept gun bans if it comes from a republican while foaming at the mouth if it comes from a democrat because apparently it’s more pleasant to be raped by your own guy.
But anyway - if democrats backed off the gun issue, they wouldn’t lose many votes - but they might gain a significant amount of the people who vote republican only because of their perceived support of gun rights. And they have to a large degree over the last 10 years, but if they wake up and realize this they’d be smart to become at least weakly-pro gun rather than passively anti-gun.
First, if no one cares, why is this an issue? Why all the pushes for bans?
Secondly, as usual, the people who advocate gun bans are ignorant. “semi-automatic” does not mean “assault weapon” (which, itself, is an utterly made up term that essentially means scary-looking guns that have no functional difference from other guns that are more cosmetically pleasing to most people). 99%+ of semi-automatic weapons aren’t what people would call assault weapons.
All weapons that look like this are semi-automatics, and a lot of guns that look like this are. The media has done a good job of implanting the idea that “semi-automatic” means scary cute orphan shooting weapon, or something - as if it were some small subset of particularly scary guns - when the vast majority of modern guns of any type are semi-automatic.
What kind of scary-ass view is that? Government can only rule by the threat of actively suppressing it’s population? Only where the government wishes to enforce policies that are oppressive to its native population does it require a monpoly on force. Lots of countries have existed peacefully with distributed force by having a government that’s not so evil that it makes people violently rebel. The US throughout most of the first half of its history is one example.
And it’s silly, anyway. Of course an armed population with the will to resist can do so against a technologically superior government. They wouldn’t engage in symetric warfare. If even 10% of all gun owners in the US went into active rebellion and the general populace was generally supportive of them, the combined force of the US military would have very little chance of suppressing it. We’d be talking about a movement hundreds of times larger than the insurgency in Iraq.
A note: I don’t agree with it for several reasons, and I’m not happy entirely with Bloomberg’s stings that he does, but generally, for a Democrat, that’s about as reasoned as I’m likely to find.
And yes, what SenorBeef says is essentially correct, and why I am a conservative. The government is not evil, but it is controlling (and, essentially, human. Will Rogers had it right.), and every inch it takes is one it will not give back. Our rights do not come from the government, but from our status as free people. The government exists because we give some of our rights to it.
