Obama is talking Second Amendment.

At first he sounds really good.

Obama said he spoke to Northern Illinois University's president Friday morning by phone and offered whatever help his Senate office could provide in the investigation and improving campus security. The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about the Illinois shooting to reporters while campaigning in neighboring Wisconsin.

The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees gun ownerships only to militias, but he believes it grants individual gun rights.

"I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation" like background checks, he said during a news conference.

Like I said, pretty good – and I think most of us are open to some discussion about what constitutes a “commonsense regulation”.

Unfortunately, Obama then turns around and proves that he is really just another gun-grabber.

At his news conference, he voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.

“The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our Constitution,” Obama said.

The problem is that the DC law in question sweepingly bans an entire class of guns and limits the rest in such a manner as to render them inoperative. Indeed, under that law the act of meaningfully bearing arms within the District of Columbia is a criminal offense when that “individual right to bear arms” is exercised by an average citizen.

Obama, then, is trying to have it both ways. While he pays lip service to the Second Amendment, he actually is willing to see it eviscerated through legislation that restricts the individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue for something like the DC law is like arguing that the expansive right to freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment is subject to “commonsense regulation” so that it includes only the right to be a member of a government-approved and licensed church.

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Posted by: Greg at 11:40 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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