Op-Ed: Taking aim at Obama's stance on gun control

The candidate says he supports the right to bear arms. The record says otherwise.

By John R. Lott Jr.

Barack Obama claims he is a friend of gun owners. He certainly has convinced the media.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times said the NRA's opposition to Obama seemed strange because "Obama does not oppose gun rights. He has made a point of pounding this home to rural audiences, telling them he has no intention of taking their guns away: not their shotguns, not their handguns, not anything."

From the Boston Globe to FactCheck.org, the media and their watchdogs have uncritically recited Obama's statement that he believes there is an individual right to own guns. How does Brooks Jackson, FactCheck.org's director, explain the NRA's opposition to Obama? He says: "They are lying. . . . They are just making this up."

Yet, while the media and their checkers take Obama's current statements about his beliefs at face value, the NRA doesn't. So who is right?

In Pennsylvania, the answer could alter the election outcome. With about one million of the country's 12.5 million hunters, Pennsylvanians spend more time hunting than the residents of any other state. Pennsylvania also has more concealed-handgun permit holders than any other state, about 600,000.

In June, when the Supreme Court struck down the gun ban in Washington, D.C., Obama claimed that the decision merely confirmed his own view. He told Fox News that he had "said consistently that I believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and that was the essential decision that the Supreme Court came down on."

But that doesn't square with statements Obama has made in the past.

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