Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;
Slarti:
“So you wouldn’t do anything that involved data mining? (By the way, a potential use for my idea [which this project was merely a small part of] is tracking terrorists, but I guess that would be unethical…)”
as we see today, the current liberal/progressive administration is all for killing American citizens without benefit of due process.
Like I always say scratch the surface of a lib and you find a person who doesnt care much for codified law. You can read codified as Constitutional in this case.
Obama should be impeached for doing this. I dont think Bush ever killed an American citizen without due process. Nor Cheney either.
Plus I dont think Roberto Gonzales put automatic weapons in the hands of Mexican drug dealers, of which some have probably ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda or worse. To be used at some future time against American citizens here or abroad.
I hope progressives have the same level of outrage over the killing of an American citizen as they did over the torture of enemy combatants.
By the way, the New York times felt tracking cell phones was unethical and outed the administration when Bush did it which probably prevented the capture or killing of Bin Laden early in 2002. I am pretty sure you were all for the Times outing cell phone tracking at the time. So why are you now for the use of tracking devices? Because you developed something and now want to sell it?
Maybe you can also get a 528 million dollar loan from the govmint to develop the technology. 🙂 Well maybe not, I doubt you gave large sums of money for Obama’s campaign.
Slartibartfast: “…whenever I’m online, I really will be in my parent’s basement…”
—-That is a BIG club Slarti, but your attic sounds lovely. 🙂
Blouise: “Having done your basement you can just skip lotta’s … boring doing the same thing twice … which leaves you free to do my attic.”
—-“The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.”** Blouise, how nice to see you this morning dear, you’re up early.
**Ellery Queen
🙂
I have 3 generations of stuff in my basement including littering every room, as well as rather nice collections of some stuff I spent time amassing myself. I could give HenMan a run for his money at a shot to be on Hoarders. You have no idea how interesting the prospect of rooting through an attic in 115 year old house is. It’s downright titillating. Perhaps I could clean out your attic and you could clean out my basement? Somehow, I don’t think Slarti is going to be at all cooperative. 🙂
Torte? I love torte of any kind at any time and I’m sure I would admire your attic, thanks for the invite.
Lotta,
Come and join us for torte … admire my attic 🙂
Gene and raff … come and throw blueberries at HenMan …
HenMan,
You coy devil … I see through your claim that this thread is too much for your Madman Muntz computer … you just want me to make a fool of myself chasing you around the blog.
As far as DuMont is concerned, I never imagined you as a “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” kind of guy … a man of mystery limping with the bobcats. If you take a shower you may join Slarti and I in a slice of torte.
Slarti,
Okay … I had to google it but I found the lake … sad to say my lake only ranks as thirteenth largest globally … but I’m relatively close to the river that caught fire.
Having done your basement you can just skip lotta’s … boring doing the same thing twice … which leaves you free to do my attic. The house is 115 years old so god knows what’s buried up there … but be prepared … HenMan calls it home.
I see you know how to handle raff but really 1+1=2 is enough to shut him up.
We share a love for raspberries. I do a Blitz Torte filled with raspberries bound with whipped cream (almonds, cinnamon). If you survive the attic, especially HenMan’s bobcats, I’ll make you one.
I’m a Yuper wannabe. No joke … if I could talk Tex into it I’d move there tomorrow … there or New Mexico … yeah, I know … extremes …
I’m a Troll and a natural born Spartan fan (as well as having a BS and an MS from MSU…), but I can talk Yuper, eh.
Are you a Yuper or a Troll?
Damn, meant to switch sockpuppets on the last post… grrrrr.
Lotta,
You’re right about my comment on the corrections page, my bad. I would note, however, that since I’ve been divorced for over a decade and have gotten set in my bachelor ways, I’m probably pretty resistant to being hectored into cleaning out your basement. Although, actually, my dad and I (and his girlfriend – which is really weird, but I’m glad he found someone after my mom died…) are closing up our cottage for the winter this weekend and I’ll be moving back to the house I grew up in and I’m thinking about cleaning out the basement (or part of it anyway) to set up an office – that way, whenever I’m online, I really will be in my parent’s basement… 😉
raff,
I don’t do windows.
e to the y dy dx
e to the x dx
cos sec tan sin
3.14159
Dis-integrate them EL High!
– Mr. Steidle, my high school calculus teacher
Now behave or there will be more maths… Don’t make me get Pythagorean on your ass!
Gene,
Sorry, but that’s another one that I’ll just have to take for the team…
And I have to agree with Blouise on the blueberries – now, raspberries… yum!
Ppptttthhhppp! 😛
Blouise,
It all depends on the attic. I spend my summers in a light, airy attic (which, by the way, is here [pointing at the first joint on the middle finger on my right palm]*) looking out over the 5th most beautiful lake in the world (according to National Geographic). How does your attic compare?
By the way, you asked (in email) if I had gotten a grant – the answer is no. I’m starting a company – I’m working on an email telling you about it, but I keep getting distracted (like by people trying to get me to do their chores for them…). I’d finish it tonight, but if I don’t get some code to my Director of Software Development and an updated version of the business model to my Director of Communications by tomorrow night, then, as the boss, I’m going to have to chew my own ass out – and I’m just not that flexible… but I’ll send it eventually.
* It’s a Michigan thing… You can’t do that shit in Jersey, but in Michigan, that’s how we roll, eh.
http://www.mystery.com/~gabe/michigander.html
Blouise-
I don’t think I can come back to this 2nd Amendment commentary. I have a 1955 Muntz computer that only gets the Turley blog and the DuMont Network. If the atmospheric conditions are just right, I can sometimes get “Super Circus”- that Mary Hartline is one hot babe!!! Anyway, my Muntz bogs down badly when it hits the 500 comments threshhold, so I must leave. Good night.
Blouise-
I have been invited to show my condo on “Hoarders”, but they say I must first drink enough 2 liter bottles of MelloYello to create a pile of strewn plastic bottles 3 feet deep. If I do that, I won’t be able to see the bobcats stalking me and have time to pull my shiv. I also won’t be able to find my CD’s by McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, The Mound City Blue Blowers, and Jelly James and his Fewsicians. I had to tell them I only do inadvertent clutter- never premeditated clutter. A man must have standards, you know.
Blouise,
I’m very disappointed in you (not HenMan) – I can’t believe that you would do such a thing… I mean really, what did I ever do to you? What you did just wasn’t right and you should be ashamed. What was possibly going through your mind when you suggested that I lived in New Jersey? 🙁
You know we are going to pay a heavy price for this when Slarti checks in. I suggest we all take my usual out when righteous blame starts falling … blame HenMan.
roflmao
Well Gene, if there are any volunteers for that I’d need first to know the OPFAC number of their ORTUPS units. 😉
I just want to know who you ladies plan to harangue and guilt into the job of “Boy Toy”.
And blueberries are awesome, although I prefer what the Native Americans called them: star berries.
BLOUISE!!
And here I thought you were my bud and I always looked so favorably on your postings. Just turn my back for 1 minute and here you are hatching a plan to preemptively harangue and guilt Slarti into doing your attic before I even have started my campaign to get him to do my basement. And throwing in that he lives closer to you than me; girl, that was just … something.
Well, all is fair in chocolate and house-work after all.
Perhaps we could work out some kind of multi-target, guilt driven, time-share thing. If we work it right, we can rope Raf into this some way and while Slarti is doing his windows we can guilt Raf into our fall yard work. Yea, that’s the ticket. 🙂
raff,
He’s a scientist … don’t they usually live in caves and work magic spells trying to create gold? I doubt he’ll do windows but basements and attics are perfect places to run experiments.
Blouise,
Does Slarti do windows too??
What’s that you say? Slarti cleans basements? Does he also do attics? How do we guilt him into it? I think he’s in Mich or maybe N J (hell, I don’t know where he is) but he’s closer to me than he is to lotta (though I’m not totally sure where she lives) … anyway, my attic hasn’t been cleaned out for 30 years … I just keep sticking things up there so I really need him.