Joe Biden shoots his goose

By Chad D. Baus

It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The phrase definitely applies to Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and the 2004 Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry.

For most of the 2004 campaign, the Kerry campaign was winning on the gun issue by making it a non-issue. Kerry was doing well, having lulled to sleep the giant pro-gun voting block.

And then came September. The Swift Vets had Kerry struggling in the polls, and in a widely-publicized rescue move, former Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville, Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis and Joe Lockhart join the campaign.

In the first week, Kerry's "saviors" had succeeded in placing the gun issue on the front page of every newspaper in America, by staging a photo-op of Kerry being given a shotgun as a gift from union workers in West Virginia. The stunt quickly became a gaffe, when it was discovered that the gun was on the list of firearms that would be banned under a still-active S. 1431, which Kerry had co-sponsored. Kerry left the gun behind in West Virginia, and the polls there left him far behind as well.

That same month, remarks attributed to Kerry in Outdoor Life magazine spurned rumors that the candidate had smuggled a "Communist Chinese assault rifle" back from Vietnam as a "reminder of his service". When questioned, he quickly blamed the comments on an unnamed campaign aide who filled out the interview questionnaire for him.

And then Kerry brought his gun gaffe brigade to Ohio, where he offered his best impression of how he must think us uncultured Ohioans speak ("Can I get me a hunting license here?") before embarqing on his infamous Ohio goose shoot, at which the camo-clad candidate proclaimed that he was "too lazy" to carry his bird off the hunting field.

This year it is Sarah Palin, instead of the Swift Vets, that has spurned a dramatic tightening of the polls. And while the current anti-gun Democrat presidential team's pandering to gun owners in the Midwest doesn't come with photos of Obama and Biden in freshly-purchased camo and carrying borrowed shotguns (yet?), NRA "F"-rated Joe Biden's recent proclamation that if "[Obama] tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem", is every bit as much of an insult to the collective intelligence of America's gun owners.

When I read that quote, repeated ad nauseum by the anti-gun, pro-Obama media, my immediate thought was "I can't believe he thinks we're that stupid." Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) Chairman Alan Gottlieb shared similar sentiments in a press release addressing Biden's comments entitled "It's Not Your Gun Obama Wants, It's Everyone Else's".

Not only is this far from the first time Joe Biden has insulted gun owners, it isn't even the first time in 2008.

Though most apparently never knew it, judging by the number of votes he received, Joe Biden was himself a presidential candidate in the Democrat primary earlier this year. And when competing for primary votes among the Democrats' looney leftist base, Joe Biden revealed what he really thinks about guns owners and our right to own effective common firearms.

In 2004, John Kerry thought buying an Ohio hunting license and posing in camo with a freshly-killed bird (yes, killed, not harvested - it wasn't for food or sport, it was for show) was enough to convince us rural Midwest yokels that he was one of us, despite years and years and years of an anti-gun record.

In 2008, Barack Obama and Joe Biden appear to belive offering verbal support for the Second Amendment will be enough to erase their absolutely horrid records on gun rights from our memories.

Having not learned from history, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have decided to repeat it. And it is my belief that America's gun owners, on Nov. 4, will reject their lies and vote freedom first.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.