Stamping Feet When There’s No Reason To

Filed in National by on October 21, 2009

A recent Gallop poll shows that most gun owners (55%) think that President Obama wants to ban the sale of  guns.

Gallup Poll editor-in-chief Frank Newport notes that President Obama has never said — either on the campaign trail or after taking office — that he intends to push for a ban on the sale of all guns. In fact, in May he signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

Gun-nuts are just a different fruit from the same tree as wingnuts.

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A Dad, a husband and a data guru

Comments (38)

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  1. Oh goody, a gun thread. Have fun people!

  2. pandora says:

    Seriously? A gun post? You’re a brave man! 😉

    Gun-nuts are just a different fruit from the same tree as wingnuts.

    Well, it sure isn’t the tree of knowledge.

  3. nemski says:

    Don’t confuse bravery with insanity. 😉

  4. lizard says:

    Principles that Obama supports on gun issues:

    Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
    Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
    Require manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms.

    Source: 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test Jul 2, 1998

    Opposes Concealed Carry for civilians:
    When I queried him about the vote, he said, “I didn’t find that [vote] surprising. I am consistently on record and will continue to be on record as opposing concealed carry. This was a narrow exception in an exceptional circumstance where a retired police officer might find himself vulnerable as a consequence of the work he has previously done–and had been trained extensively in the proper use of firearms.“

    It wasn’t until a few weeks later that another theory came forward about the uncharacteristic vote. Obama was battling with his GOP opponent to win the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police.

    Source: From Promise to Power, by David Mendell, p.250-251 Aug 14, 2007

  5. lizard says:

    FactCheck: Yes, Obama endorsed Illinois handgun ban
    Obama was being misleading when he denied that his handwriting had been on a document endorsing a state ban on the sale and possession of handguns in Illinois. Obama responded, “No, my writing wasn’t on that particular questionnaire. As I said, I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns.”
    Actually, Obama’s writing was on the 1996 document, which was filed when Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate. A Chicago nonprofit, Independent Voters of Illinois, had this question, and Obama took hard line:

    35. Do you support state legislation to:
    a. ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns? Yes.
    b. ban assault weapons? Yes.
    c. mandatory waiting periods and background checks? Yes.

    Obama’s campaign said, “Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires–a staffer did–and there are several answers that didn’t reflect his views then or now. He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire, but some answers didn’t reflect his views.”

    Source: FactCheck.org analysis of 2008 Philadelphia primary debate

  6. Scott P says:

    This whole “Obama wants to take my guns” thing is just another example of the classic wingnut idea of “I don’t care what he said or what he’s done, we know what he really wants to do.”

    I’m surprised our usual gunatic hasn’t popped up yet. Maybe he’s still out at the range, or tracking down tree-huggers?

  7. Bob S. says:

    Q: When you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?

    A: I don’t think that we can get that done. But what we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. As president, I intend to make it happen. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership. It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. Then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago. We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.
    Source: 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas Jan 15, 2008

    http://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm

    “I don’t think that we can get that done” is not the same as not wanting to ban or confiscate firearms.

    I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer’s lobby. But I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone disrespected him, we have a problem of morality. Not only do ew need to punish thatman for his crime, but we need to acknowledge that there’s a hole in his heart, one that government programs alone may not be able to repair.
    Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p.215 Oct 1, 2006

    And for the law abiding folks who live in the inner cities? Doesn’t that sound like a man willing to ban firearms?

    we know what he really wants to do.”

    We know what he really wants to do based on his words and his actions

  8. Scott P says:

    Bob, my friend, read your own comment. “…by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns” A whole paragraph defending the right to gun ownership, and you don’t go past the ambiguous statement at the beginning. How does that not perfectly prove what I just wrote? And even the quote you got stuck on seems to be in reference to “licensing and registering gun owners”, not prohibiting them.

  9. lizard says:

    Obama pays lip service to the Second Ammendment, but wants to ban handguns and semi-automatice rifles and shotguns and then license, register, regulate and tax what is left.

  10. cassandra_m says:

    And RICO is back — cutting and pasting the bullshit again.

  11. pandora says:

    Cutting and pasting without knowing how to post a link – even though I showed him (step by step) how. As far as I’m concerned… no link, no comment.

  12. Bob S. says:

    Scott,

    I know what he has said…but I’ll fall back on the old saying
    “Your actions speak so loud I can not hear your words”.

    Obama’s actions as a senator, both state and federal, show that he is willing to ban handguns.

    What do we have to do, wait until he proposes legislation? By keeping the pressure on Obama and Congress (let’s not forget who passes laws), we are making it difficult for a ban or confiscation to take place.

    Far too many people over the years have advocated repealing the 2nd amendment, have advocated trying to remove our right to keep and bear arms.

  13. a.price says:

    Yeah he banned the hell out of those guns in parks….wait.. Sure helps your arguments when the object of your rage does the opposite of what you need him to do to advance your extreme right wing agenda.

    Because of gun-grabbing obama you, Bob s and Lizard can carry guns in national parks….. why aren’t you thinking him with a celebratory dead buffalo or whatever you people like to kill?

  14. a.price says:

    “Far too many people over the years have advocated repealing the 2nd amendment, have advocated trying to remove our right to keep and bear arms.” ~Bob S

    not counting law enforcement officials, Nobel winners, teachers, doctors, emergency service workers, sociologists, and millions of victims of gun violence,

    who with any real power in this country has actually said “we should repeal the second amendment? if your site Glenn Beck, you are wrong

  15. lizard says:

    a.price, what was the title of that bill? I would like to read the law you claim Obama signed.

  16. V says:

    I’m sorry i don’t know how to post a link either! But I have presents for lizard. Here’s an article about the law, from Fox News no less, that bastion of integrity.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/22/repeal-gun-ban-national-parks/

    Here’s the page about the bill from the library of congress. It’s mainly a credit card regulation bill with the gun provision tucked into it.
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.00627:

  17. V says:

    well apparently i do know how to post a link. beginners luck!

  18. pandora says:

    V, you did great! But my point with lizard is that he is constantly cutting and pasting without linking. If you want to check his sources you have to hunt. That gets old.

    You, on the other hand provide interesting opinions. 😉

  19. lizard says:

    “It’s mainly a credit card regulation bill with the gun provision tucked into it.”

    I am shocked by your honesty. Thank you.

    aprice would have us believe that the fact that he signed the credit card bill even though it had this minor ammendment attached outweighs everything he said or did on the subject previosly.

  20. a. price says:

    actually lizzy-loo aprice would have you believe that you read V’s comment and not the link. typical right wing whack-nut party loyalist.

    here is the text
    (Sec. 512) Prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from promulgating or enforcing any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm, including an assembled or functional firearm, in any unit of the National Park System (NPS) or the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) if: (1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm; and (2) the possession of the firearm complies with the law of the state in which the NPS or NWRS unit is located.

    looks like you lose again. ass.

  21. Bob S. says:

    “I believe all handguns should be abolished.” – Sen. John Chafee, 1/9/97.

    “If it were up to me, We’d ban them all.” – Rep. Mel Reynolds, CNN Crossfire, 12/9/93.

    “Ultimately, I would like to see the manufacture and possession of handguns banned except for military and police use.” – Rep. Bobby Rush, Chicago Tribune, 12/5/99.

    “We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases.” – Rep. William Clay (D-MO), St. Louis Dispatch, 5/8/93.

    “If it was up to me, no one but law enforcement officers would own hand guns.” – Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, 11/13/98.

    “We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights or ordinary Americans to own firearms … that we are unable to think about reality.” – President Bill Clinton, March 1, 1993.

    “We are going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We’re going to beat guns into submission!” – Representative Chuck Shumer, 12/8/93.

    “Mr. President, what is going on in this country? Does going to school mean exposure to handguns and to death? As you know, my position is we should ban all handguns, get rid of them, no manufacture, no sale, no importation, no transportation, no possession of a handgun. There are 66 million handguns in the United States of America today, with 2 million being added every year.” – Senator John H. Chafee, (R-RI), 6/11/92.

    “Mr. speaker, we must take swift and strong action if we are to rescue the next generation from the rising of tide armed violence. That is why today I am introducing the Handgun Control Act of 1992. This legislation would outlaw the possession, importation, transfer or manufacture of a handgun except for use by public agencies, individuals who can demonstrate to their local police chief that they need a gun because of threat to their life or the life of a family member, licensed guard services, licensed pistol clubs which keep the weapons securely on premises, licensed manufacturers and licensed gun dealers.” – Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, 8/12/92.

    “Indeed, that the Second Amendment poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps the most well-settled proposition in American constitutional law. Yet the incantation of this phantom right continues to pervade Congressional debate.” – Erwin N. Griswold, Solicitor General, Nixon Administration (Washington Post, 11/4/90)
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/912305/posts

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on CBS “60 Minutes”: “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in — I would have done it.”

    Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/07/EDGIV5EQ6B1.DTL#ixzz0UgY0YmAv

  22. Scott P says:

    Wow! Amazing! I had no idea Barack Obama has gone by so many names over the past 20 years. He is one sneaky SOB.

  23. cassandra_m says:

    And sneaky enough to have two of those names be Republican ones.

  24. lizard says:

    aparently Scott and Cassy coudln’t figure out that Bob was responding to aprice “who with any real power in this country has actually said “we should repeal the second amendment? if your site Glenn Beck, you are wrong”

  25. lizard says:

    section 512… Section Five Hundred and Twelve of a credit card regulation bill limited the power of the Secretary of the interior to make new rules regarding firearms in national parks.

    Not exactly a “cold dead hands” moment for Obama.

    Obama is an anti-gun liberal… and you moonbats love him for it. I don’t get why you are upset that we aknowledge that he is an anti-gun liberal.

  26. cassandra_m says:

    And RICO continues to be completely addled by grease from all of those fries and burgers he is cooking up daily — none of those quotes call for the repeal of the second amendment.

    And Obama doesn’t need to be a cold dead hands guy. What you haven’t been able to demonstrate is that he wants to take away your guns. Because the people over here are definitely going to know the difference between legislative indifference and an active effort of confiscation.

    So again, Mr. Wingnut, you aren’t capable of holding up your own dumbass arguments.

  27. Bob S. says:

    Lizard,

    It is a symptom exhibited by the pro-ignorance, anti-freedom crowd quite often – Reading Comprehension Failure Syndrome.

    Q: You said recently, “I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.” But you support the D.C. handgun ban, and you’ve said that it’s constitutional. How do you reconcile those two positions?

    A: Because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.
    Source: 2008 Politico pre-Potomac Primary interview Feb 11, 2008

    I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer’s lobby. But I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone disrespected him, we have a problem of morality. Not only do ew need to punish thatman for his crime, but we need to acknowledge that there’s a hole in his heart, one that government programs alone may not be able to repair.
    Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p.215 Oct 1, 2006

    Cassandra, Scott: Please explain how banning firearms because of the location (inner city) is respecting the right of people to keep and bear arms?

    Or how about this one?

    So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’
    http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/05/obama-im-not-going-to-take-your-guns-away/

    Is he not going to take them away because he supports our rights or because he simply doesn’t have the votes in Congress? Shouldn’t we be wary now that the Democrat party is a majority in Congress?

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=bW3&q=repeal+the+second+amendment&aq=0&oq=repeal+the+seco&aqi=g1

    Check out that google search which took a quarter of a second to find all those quotes and calls to repeal the 2nd amendment.

    By the way, for you gun control advocates – My right to keep and bear arms isn’t dependent on the 2nd Amendment. That amendment only limits the governments ability to infringe on my right. Repeal the 2nd and my right to keep and bear arms doesn’t go away–neither do my firearms. Think about it.

  28. cassandra_m says:

    And none of this has anything with Obama banning any guns.

    Which he still hasn’t done.

    Which is still the topic of this thread.

    But getting your panties in a twist of the non-existent is something of the movement conservative legacy, yes?

  29. Scott P says:

    Exactly, Cass. Bob’s first quote says exactly nothing about banning legal guns. In fact, it specifically talks about respecting the 2nd Amend. The second quote has one ambiguous phrase about a specific topic. That appears to be what this whole movement seems to be hanging its hat on. Despite numerous, direct statements to the contrary. The last quote is just devil’s advocate hypothetical. And again, he explicitly says, “I’m not going to take away your guns.” But when you’re dealing with paranoid theorists, statements often mean the exact opposite of what they appear, since they know what you really mean.

  30. Scott P says:

    But to be fair to them, yes, Obama is in favor of common-sense gun control laws. But pro gun control is not the same as “anti-gun”. That would be like saying small-government conservatives are really anti-government and want to secretly dismantle Congress. But again, to be fair, if you are against any kind of regulation, registration, or control of firearms, then you’re not going to agree with his positions. Just try not to get carried away with nonsensical slippery-slope arguments. Controling automatic weapons today does not mean taking your hunting rifle tomorrow.

  31. cassandra_m says:

    Disagreeing with Obama’s gun positions is just fine — but banning them or taking them away from people isn’t a rational representation of his positions. And the only reason that they’ve created these extreme positions is so that they can feed off of more of their manufactured outrage.

  32. Bob S. says:

    And you two still haven’t answered the question of what we should do?

    Wait until legislation has been introduced to ban firearms?

    Obama’s history of supporting gun control is well known.

    He has stated, as I’ve shown, that he wants to ban handguns in certain locations.

    Why is it a stretch to think that he, like other politicians, would ban all firearms if he had the chance?

    You asked “who with any real power in this country has actually said “we should repeal the second amendment?

    I provided those quotations. Unlike you it seems, I recognize that legislation is enacted by Congress. Many people in Congress have advocated banning firearms. President Obama wouldn’t have to advocate the ban….just sign the pass legislation.

    Controling automatic weapons today does not mean taking your hunting rifle tomorrow.

    And do you know that “automatic weapons” have been tightly controlled for decades? Since the National Firearms Act in 1934(3?), most people have not owned “automatic weapons”.

    Current attempts at gun control focus on semi-automatic weapons that are functionally identical to most “hunting rifles”.

    The anti-freedom liberals seem to think that complete bans (like Chicago has and D.C. had) are “reasonable” restrictions. President Obama also agrees with that position…I disagree. A complete ban within a city is for all practical purposes “taking away” our firearms.

    You’ve shown no proof to indicate that he or other politicians wouldn’t ban firearms. As for as what Obama said on the campaign trail, I also remember other campaign promises such as “Read my lips, no new taxes”. Campaign promises or statements only seem to last until just after the election.

    On the issue of the National Parks concealed carry:

    But since the gun measure passed, by a vote of 279-147, it nevertheless gets attached to the main bill and becomes law if President Obama signs it. He is expected to do so Friday.

    147 representatives voted to deny people their right to keep and bear arms in national parks. Why shouldn’t we be vocal and active to make sure that the next session of congress doesn’t enact legislation repealing that right or others.

    Sorry if you perceive activism as “stomping feet when we don’t have to” but the fight to keep our rights is a constant one.

  33. cassandra_m says:

    And you are still in manufactured outrage mode. So you can work on problems that don’t exactly exist yet — certainly not that Obama is taking away anyone’s guns — and don’t interfere with the rest of us working on stuff that is real and urgent.

  34. Bob S. says:

    Cassandra,

    Perhaps I’m not limited like some people to only being able to work on one thing at a time.

    Defending our rights isn’t “manufactured outrage mode”. It is being aware and advocating for our rights.

    Are you in “manufactured outrage mode” over health care or cash for clunkers or any of the thousands of other governmental boondoggles going on?

  35. pandora says:

    Life lesson: Never invite a gun enthusiast/2Aer to a dinner party. If you do, don’t make dessert. It’s amazing how the rest of the guests suddenly have to leave early.

  36. Bob S. says:

    Pandora,

    How interesting that you phrase it that way. Nemski starts a post designed to provoke a response, insults 2nd amendment advocates and then you insult the advocates for responding.

    All the while ignoring the insults and rudeness of the gun control crowd.

  37. pandora says:

    Oh, I blame nemski, as well. Despite that, my point still holds.

  38. cassandra_m says:

    But it is interesting that nemski posted a plain fact — that people like these gun nuts have worked themselves into a lather over a non-existent threat. Certainly not a threat from President Obama. But somehow pointing that out is supposed to be rude? Or provocative?

    Welcome to Wingnut World, where the facts are just plain rude.