Obama On Second Amendment. Let The Communities Decide

Obama continues his effort to convince voters that he believes that the Second Amendment gives an individual the right to keep and bear arms but when he further explains in detail what that means, it becomes clear he doesn’t believe an individual or anyone for that matter, has a right to arm themselves.

In an interview with the Chicago Sun Times last week Obama was answering questions more specifically directed at the rising gun violence in Chicago. This is what he had to say about the pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court – Washington, D.C. versus Heller.

My view continues to be that the constitution, I believe, does provide a right to bear arms; but that local communities, and state governments, as well as the federal government, have a right to common-sense regulations and firearm ownership [rules.] The truth is, obviously, the ban here in Chicago, the ban in D.C. is not keeping the guns out of our cities, and so I’m interested in just figuring out what works and I’m confident we can come up with laws that work and that pass constitutional muster and don’t infringe on the rights of lawful gun owners whether it’s in Downstate Illinois or rural Montana.

Obama says what most intelligent people have known for a long time – that the gun bans don’t do anything to stop crime. All it does do is prohibit people from their God-given and constitutional right to self protection. He once again talks about “common sense” restrictions on guns. A common tactic of the left when debating “reasonable” gun control, is to cite their idea of reasonable controls over the First Amendment – always the “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” scenario. What they refuse to understand is that it is a far cry from comparable reasonableness in not allowing someone to protect themselves through gun ownership and somebody yelling fire in a crowded theater. One could argue that a reasonable or common sense restriction on gun ownership might be a weapon of mass destruction.

But Obama goes on to further explain a question about why as a state legislator he voted against giving people known to have been threatened, a right to own a gun.

I felt that [the first one] was a precedent for conceal-and-carry laws. There has not been any evidence that allowing people to carry a concealed weapon is going to make anybody safer. [The second one] is relevant to the D.C. handgun issue. I wanted to preserve the right of local communities to enforce local ordinances and this would have overturned municipalities being able to enforce their own ordinances. We can argue about whether the ordinances work or not. But I wanted to make sure that local communities were recognized as having a right to regulate firearms.

We have to question Obama’s actual knowledge of “evidence” concerning gun ownership. He says there is no evidence that allowing people to carry concealed makes anybody safer. Common sense would tell us that that is bogus and why do politicians get to decide which parts of the U.S. Constitution they want to allow us to experience?

Mike Adams at TownHall.com in his article this morning states that there is in fact 15 studies that suggest that concealed carry reduces homicide rates. Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Next, I calmly let him know that 60% of the refereed studies indicate that CCW laws reduce homicide rates while 40% show they have no effect. And none provide evidence that they actually increase homicide rates. I owe the professor an apology because I actually misquoted the number of studies indicating CCW laws reduce homicide rates. The number is actually 15, not nine as I had claimed. Thus, he was right to predict I would present a biased argument. But it was biased in his favor.

Obama says that he wants to make sure that local communities can toss aside their state’s constitution and that of the U.S. Constitution, well, at least the Second Amendment because he doesn’t like it, and let the communities like D.C. and Chicago prevent people from being able to protect themselves. They are effectually saying that it is alright to allow lawful, innocent residents in those communities get killed as long as we can stop the crooks from killing themselves.

Do you suppose that Obama would uphold that same kind of reasoning when applied to the First Amendment or any other Amendment for that matter?

One of the first signs of insanity is to repeat an action over and over without ever trying to change anything. The actions of the far left, Obama and Clinton being a part of that, is to continually repeat the action of disarming lawful citizens while denying the fact that it does any good. This is insane.

Tom Remington