Barack Obama vs. The 2nd Amendment

You don't need to be a politics major to understand that just about all politicians are out of touch with their constituencies, or even reality itself, in one way or another.

For all the messianic hubbub surrounding Barack Obama, his stance on the right of law-abiding US citizens to keep and bear arms demonstrates just such an instance of his lack of foundation in reality.

Sen. Obama has spent a great deal of time doing political work in the state of Illinois. Illinois is home to Chicago, one of the most violent cities in the US. Paradoxically so, it "boasts" heavy restrictions on firearms ownership relative to most other states. If Sen. Obama is elected this November, he will make the District of Columbia his new home. Like Chicago, Washington, D.C. experiences a violent crime rate that is significantly higher than average despite severe firearms control policies. In fact, many states and cities in the US with high rates of violent crime have heavy firearms restrictions, often imposed state-wide (Illinois, California, et al.). Senator Obama does not seem to understand that passing more laws only work against people who obey them in the first place.

Take our multifarious laws against murder - the people who break such laws generally do not spend weeks agonizing over their decision to commit murder. What, then, would stop a person with criminal intent from violating a firearms law? Restricting types of firearms only affects those who go through the legal channels. There are already laws on the books prohibiting convicted felons and those adjudicated to be mentally unfit from owning firearms. Sen. Obama acts like those laws do not already exist.

His stance, like so many other politicians and policymakers in his camp, is the following:

Law prohibits A --> A is still committed --> Pass more laws prohibiting A --> A is still committed --> repeat process until our legal system looks like a Manchester, UK river circa 1870

In essence, he is hinting at criminalizing the breaking of laws that already exist. It's not the law, stupid! It's the enforcement.

I now give you the following excerpt:

"(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."

Sen. Obama, YOU may not know any "self-respecting" hunters (what, you can only be "self-respecting" if you use a breechloading or bolt-action rifle with a single-shot capacity?) but who are you to determine what people "need" and what they "don't need". That is moral busybodyism at its worst, not to mention a throwback to Clinton-era nanny-statism. Besides, he fails to note the primary purpose of the firearm in US society: self-defense, whether from our own government or from other citizens who wish to do us harm. I will be much better off with a 19-round magazine (NOT a clip) than the 6 shots that a revolver will allow me in a self-defense situation. In this case, I would certainly want to do as much physical harm to my attacker as I possibly can. As they say, it is better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.

"You don't shoot 19 rounds at a deer."

What about 1 round each at 19 deer? If I can bag an entire year's worth of venison for my familiy and everyone else on the block without having to change mags, that just means I'm acting with maximum efficiency. I might also practice with the same rifle at the shooting range, and a larger magazine means less reloading time. Nothing about my 19 round magazine in this context involves doing "physical harm to people".

Funny he brings up the Virginia Tech shootings, a school that already had a total ban on firearms possession by students.

Check out the statement by VT spokesman Larry Hincker, made three months prior to the rampage, in regard to the defeat of a bill that would have allowed university students in Virginia who had concealed-carry permits to utilize their right to self-defense on the campus:

http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-50658

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

The defeat of the bill only ensured that the students who were ordinarily able to carry a concealed handgun everywhere else in Virginia were disarmed and had to fend for themselves like everyone else and "wait for the cavalry to come charging over the hill" before it was too late.

Instead of pulling the 'police state' card and strip-searching every student at each entry point, perhaps Virginia would have been wise to let permitholders defend themselves and their classmates instead of forcing them to cower behind desks and pray they weren't going to die before police arrived. Instead, most of the victims were cleanly executed with shots to the head, signifying that Cho was not doing the ol' "spray and pray" - firing indiscriminately. He had the time to make clean kills. The Virginia legislature and the university faculty disarmed people who had already proven themselves to be law-abiding (look up the requirements for getting a concealed-carry permit if you don't want to take my word for it) outside of the campus and instead forced the student body to rely solely on the police. Their short-sightedness and disrespect for those who follow laws got 32 innocent people killed.

What if someone was able to fire back? Two people? Five people? If that had happened, 3 or 4 people might've died, maybe none at all. There wouldn't have been 32 families grieving, and trolls all across the Series Of Tubes We Know As The Internets wouldn't be posting about "beating Cho's high score".

It's only going to get worse with Sen. Obama as President. This is a man who does not believe that people who defend themselves with lethal force may rely on the legal nature of self-defense if they used said force in a zone that prohibits firearms (which could be your own home, depending on where you live). He has promoted the "one gun per month" policy, as if criminals operate on timetables or that they have never used anything but firearms to commit murder. People who pass the background checks should be able to buy as many firearms per month as they please. Firearms owners are not criminals, but the Democratic party has a bad habit of treating them as such. To people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Dianne Feinstein, gun owners are just "accidents waiting to happen". What is this, the Division of Precrime? Minority Report was an awesome movie, but it is at the same time a frighteningly real concept that has been playing out in various subtle shades for a long time.

This will all come under the guise of "reasonable restrictions". What does Mr. Ivory-Tower-Ivy-League-politician-who-has-never-fired-a-gun-in-his-life know about "reasonable restrictions"? Banning .50cal rifles because they could "potentially" shoot down an airliner, despite all evidence that claims otherwise? Banning civilian ownership of automatic weapons because they could be "potentially" used in a crime, never mind that there is only one recorded instance in the past decade of a murder being committed with such a weapon? They have no problem with "reasonable restrictions" as long as those restrictions don't affect the ability of their bodyguards to carry weapons against people who might try to attack the guarded in question.

I'm sorry, but the average American citizen cannot afford to hire a security guard or pay for an expensive alarm system. Most martial arts are only useful if your opponent is in the same weight class and gender as you are. The gun is the true equalizer: between man and woman, weak and strong, wheelchair-bound and ambulatory, old and young.

To tell a woman traveling on foot in a city at night that she should carry pepper spray (assuming her attacker is working alone), shout "HELP", hope someone notices, and then hope that someone calls the police is absolutely sexist. Shouting doesn't stop a rapist quite like putting some gaping holes in his chest cavity.

If legislators really want to go after guns, they'll start with ammunition. There is already a bill in the works in the CA legislature restricting ammunition sales to licensed in-state vendors. That's right - no online orders, and a perfect opportunity for a distribution and sales monopoly. I will be paying out the ass to put ammunition in my 65-year old rifle at approximately $1.05 PER ROUND of 7.62x54R, rather than the $80 I would spend for 880 rounds from an online vendor.

Sen. Obama also upholds the D.C. gun ban despite all evidence that the crime rate has done nothing but rise since the ban was implemented. He claims to believe in the individual's right of firearms ownership as per the 2nd Amendment, but by definition must also believe that D.C. is not included in the United States for some reason. As it gets closer to November, get prepared for the BS to be layered on in thicker layers. Fundamentally, Senator Obama supports disarming people who follow laws, even when it only results in those same people being preyed upon by those who didn't follow those laws, and then clamoring for more of the laws that will again be disobeyed.

Here is my message to each of you: during some point in your life, purchase a firearm and become proficient with it. Handgun, rifle, shotgun - it doesn't matter. Familiarize yourself to the noise and the recoil. Learn how they work. Learn the difference between "clip" and "magazine", "fully automatic" and "semi-automatic", "reasonable restrictions" and "disarmament and defenselessness".

What, are you going to rely on the police for the rest of your life? Take a stand for yourself. Don't let our lawmakers decide how, when, or why you need to protect yourself. This piece is not a McCain endorsement, but I could happily endure a small military base in Iraq for the next "100 years" (he was talking about a defensive agreement with Iraq, and the hyperbole of '100 years' is apparently lost on most people) rather than risk being stripped of the ability to afford ammunition for my rifle all while a self-righteous Democratic administration ham-handedly lectures us poor, dumb bastards who cling to our guns and religion about what we really need or don't need.