Obama on guns
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said this week’s shooting at Virginia Tech highlights serious shortcomings with gun control.
“We’re still selling handguns to crazy people,” Obama said during a campaign stop at a Nashua senior center on Friday. “We’re supposed to have a system that these people are screened out. What’s clear is the background check system in this case failed entirely.”
And:
“(Cho) had a semiautomatic weapon with a clip that allowed him to take 19 shots in a row,” Obama said. “I don’t know any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything. The only reason you have 19 rounds is potentially to do physical harm to people. You don’t shoot 19 rounds at a deer. And if you do, you shouldn’t be hunting.”
Gun rights aren’t about hunting and need. They never have been.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:51 am
15 rounds, anyways.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I’m gonna just repost what I did at Xavier’s when responding to the same comments from McCarthy:
It’s all about pretending to do something about crime without actually doing anything about crime. Now she goes on about “clips” not knowing that it’s a magazine for one and that all one would have to do is carry another magazine to have the same capacity of ammo. The Walther P22 only has 10 rounds in its magazine and we still haven’t heard a difinitive answer on how many rounds the Glock 19 used at VT contained. We know from reports from survivors, the killer changed magazines several times. It would have made no difference at VT. McCarthy just wants to look like she’s doing something. I explained to someone at work the other day that magazines for pistols don’t weigh much of anything empty. It’s the ammo that make them heavy. Lead in Bullets is what gives it real weight. I can carry the weight of 15 rounds in 2 magazines just as easily as I could in 1. The weight difference is negligible. Wearing a jacket or vest I could easily carry multiple magazines with no effort at all. Magazine change only takes a second with very little practice. He understood once it was explained to him. The veil of ignorance was lifted.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Funny, I didn’t know people hunted with Glocks. What a maroon.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Obama is a worthless piece of Chicago Machine feces. He was a pampered boy who was a very good law student at Yale. When he got out, he proved tottaly worthless as a lawyer so Mayor Daley sent him to Illinois’s State Senate as his proxy. When the Illinois Republicans self-destructed Daley made him his proxy in the U.S. Senate. He proves Mark Twain: “The fools in town are on our side. And ain’t that enough of a majority in any town?”
April 21st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
If Obama is elected President, he’ll have armed protection by hired guns, paid by us, with more than 19 rds. Will he reject that because its not for hunting?? Not likely!!
Guys like Obama want to relegate and confine our gun rights to privileges within the narrowed, licensed activity of hunting.
19 rds (or more) are for protecting ourselves against the likes of Cho and especially when someone like him brings others with him!!
April 21st, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Gun Control killed those kids and the blood is on the hands of people like Obama.
April 21st, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Welp, there goes HIS bid for the presidency.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:27 pm
They keep calling me asking me for money. I keep telling them that he’s gotta knock it off with the gun control…and please take that message back to the candidate.
I don’t ask to be taken off the list so I can keep needling the campaign staff about it.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
“We’re still selling handguns to crazy people.”
While this student had some serious mental issues, he was not insane. He functioned in society more than enough to “just get by.” Insane??? He was a student at Virginia Tech for gosh sakes!
Obama may start with the “insane issue”, (to lead the sheep on), it’s a setup for moving right into the “19 rounds” in a clip BS. If shooting at innocent people 19 times isn’t alright with Obama, how many shots would he be alright with? Dumbass.
His complete line of thinking is assbackwards. The fact that the law does NOT allow the sane, peaceful and law-abiding innocent students and teachers from shooting back even ONE round is the truly insane part.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm
well, Obama’s first statement is correct. This insane [check out his video] guy should not have been able to purchase a firearm. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21guns.html?hp
can’t defend his second obviously. He is from IL of course.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:15 am
[…] SayUncle tells us that Obama is bringing gun control back out to the front and center. Maybe this will give the Republicans a chance to win back their majority. […]
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 am
What an asshat.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 am
I understand that the Glock 19 holds 15 rounds, not 19 as Obama says. I expect him to continue to play fast and loose with the facts like that into the future. He has a reckless disregard for our gun rights.
CCW isn’t about hunting, it is specifically about being able to do physical harm to deadly people who threaten your life. Apparently, that’s a foreign concept to Obama. Is he from Mars, or the other side of France or someplace?
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:36 am
Obama to AP:
“I don’t know any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything.”
Pistolero to Obama:
“My money says you don’t know ANY hunters, you loon.”
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 am
While true, nobody needs 19 rounds to hunt with, it may be required to protect oneself from the hired thugs of a political hack. Personally, I like 30 round mags.
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:30 am
How long before these idiots declare all shotgun shells, other than slugs, to be high-capacity rounds.
“No self-respecting hunter needs to shoot more than one bullet at a time.”
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 am
Tell you what, Barry-O.
You take a 9mm Glock with all the “hi-cap” mags you want, and I’ll load up my Remington 870 shotgun just once. Then we’ll have at it with a couple old car hoods.
The contest will be to see who can unleash more lethal force in 10 seconds.
Most holes wins.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
It’s good for him to take a side publicly. Now there’s no doubt about where he stands. (As if there ever was…)
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Think about this, fellow gunnies: we’ve brought this on ourselves.
When things started getting bleak in the late 60’s with the GCA68, then the NFA’s of the 80’s and on, what did we do? We hid behind the “reasonableness” of hunting as a reason not to over-regulate guns. We took military weapons like the CETME and called them “Sporters”. We tried to convince both ourselves and anyone else who would listen that AKs and ARs and FALs and all those battle rifles COULD be used for hunting, see, we just bought a 5-round magazine, so they MUST be hunting rifles.
We were dismayed when we were hit with 922r, and all the cosmetic claptrap that went with it, and now we play the numbers games to try to (legally) restore our milsurp battle rifles to battle rifle condition.
What if we had just stood firm on the Second all along, and forget about trying to weld “reasonable” hunting into a basic freedom to possess and bear military infantry equipment? What if we had just said that we ARE the well-regulated militia, and we ARE armed with military weapons, so piss up a rope, you GFWs (and leave hunting the hell out of it)?
We ourselves tried to morph military weapons into hunting rifles, knowing that the US stood behind hunting but not necessarily behind an AK in every closet.
We’re reaping what we sowed.
Now, the only track left to us is to stand firmly on the Second, and tell EVERYONE that it isn’t about hunting at all, it’s about defending ourselves from lawless elements in our society (a human right which supersedes all rules written on paper), and exercising the right our Constitution gives us to be able to defend ourselves from tyranny coming from our own government.
To thine own self be true.
Amen, brothers.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:18 pm
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a response to Black Panthers buying guns through the mail and using them to snipe at policemen from housing project rooftops. Where we needed [word of Robert Bird] control, we got gun control.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Rvrdog nails it. But what do I know? I am one of those absolutists so many make fun of early on and despise when we are proven right.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
the problem with absolutism is it doesn’t sell.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Well then perhaps we shouldn’t prosecute rapiststs if they are not absolutist about it and only use partial insertion. We can call it a reasonable compromise between the woman’s rights and the rapists desire to control her.
Does that sell?
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
“What if we had just stood firm on the Second all along, and forget about trying to weld “reasonable” hunting into a basic freedom to possess and bear military infantry equipment?”
I suspect that all guns would have been outlawed and seized, but that is probably just my inner pessimist talking. I wish that taking a principled stand like that would work, but I doubt that it would.
In that vein, does anyone know how people reacted to the GCA of 1968 at the time (pro and con) it was passed, or how (if) it was opposed by, say the NRA? What other options were on the table at that time?
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:18 am
The NRA of 1968 and the NRA of today are two very different animals.
Anyone who doesn’t grasp that is ignorant of the history of this matter or politically disingenuous.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 am
The GCA of 1968 had the backing of the U.S. gun manufacturers. They viewed it as good business, thinking they would gain the market share that mail order houses, surplus sellers, and less expensively manufactured firearms of foreign origin had at that time.
It never occurred to them that this dog would turn and bite them at first opportunity, but as we know, it did. They mouthed the same words that the NRA does now about “reasonable”.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:36 am
addendum: and for the same purpose, to hide their real agenda.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I’ll refer you to SayUncle’s final line in the post above all this, rb:
“Gun rights aren’t about hunting and need. They never have been.”
Everybody, damn’ near, seems to repeat that axiom again and again, and readers all nod their heads sagely and then ignore it and effectively post “Yes, yes, but…”, while steadfastedly looking everywhere except at the implications of it.
Can’t see the axe for the iom? 😉
Taking a principled stand is wonderful. And if all that Henry, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin had done is stand on principle, we’d all be listening to “Rule Brittania” during presidential inaugurations. ;]
Principles you don’t fight for, aren’t worth the spit behind them.
Guns exist, and the 2nd Ammendment exists [for all you constitutionalists], to make sure that when you make that stand on Principle – “absolutist” as it may be – you don’t stand there with your dipper in your mitt while they make sure you get the Death part of “Liberty Or”.
If the principle don’t sell, and no one uses the 2nd for what its intended for… then all those nifty very kewl Evil Black Rifles and Wicked Assault Hangcannons we’re fighting for may as damn well be for hunting, for all the good they do.
They sure as hell ain’t doing what they’re intended for: which, as is oft claimed, is “to put the teeth in the ammendments”.
Teeth that never bite have already been pulled, guys.