Barack Obama -- Gun Lies

Obama's Gun Lies

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Their activism relies on the tactic of overloading the system

Items on this page are archived in the order of discovery.

Obama Favors Complete Ban Of Handguns

Both the McCain and Clinton campaigns are accusing Obama of giving a misleading answer to Charlie Gibson about whether his handwriting was on a questionnaire that reported him as favoring a complete ban on handguns. The Obama campaign has said that a staffer "mischaracterized" the senator's views while filling up answers to the questionnaire without Obama's input. You can see the questionnaire here. Obama's handwriting is on the first page, but tonight he said flatly, "no, my writing was not on that particular questionnaire."

There were, in fact, two versions of the questionnaire, filed under Obama's name in 1996 when he was running for the Illinois State Senate. One version has Obama's handwriting on it, one does not. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor subsequently told Politico that the senator scribbled a few notes on the first page of the questionnaire, but did not read the response to the question about banning handguns, on a subsequent page.

Either way, it seems a rather lame explanation.

Obama Believes The D. C. Ban Is Constitutional

Another Obama statement reaches its expiration date, this one on guns.

The Heller decision came down today from the Supreme Court, striking down the Washington, D.C. gun ban.

With the Supreme Court ruling, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an "inartful" statement -- Obamese for lie -- to the Chicago Tribune last year, and are blaming an "unnamed aide" characterized Obama as believing that the D. C. ban was constitutional.

"That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position," Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.

Obama took a question about the constitutionality of the gun ban from WJLA's Leon Harris during the Potomac Primary, and didn't dispute the characterization that he believes the ban is constitutional.

Here's the exchange:

LH: "One other issue that is of great importance to the people of the district here, is gun control. You said in Idaho here, recently, that "I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns." But you support the D.C. handgun ban, and you’ve said that it’s constitutional. How do you reconcile those two positions?"

BO: "Because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of people -- law-abiding citizens use if for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families."

"We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets, we are going to trace more effectively, how these guns are ending up on the streets, to unscrupulous gun dealers, who often times are selling to straw purchasers. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. Those are all approaches that I think the average gun owner would actually support. The problem is, that we’ve got a position, often times by the NRA that says any regulation whatsoever is the camel’s nose under the tent. And that, I think, is not where the American people are at. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions."

"When Obama says, "we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets," I wonder if it ever occurred to him to "take the damned criminals off the streets?"

Also, how can Obama claim "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms" when, as a director of the Joyce Foundation, he steered $15 million to the self-described "most aggressive group in the gun control movement?" That group published a book entitled, "Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns."

And, remember, on April 3rd, in the run-up to a Democratic presidential debate scheduled on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, Obama said:

"I am not in favor of concealed weapons," Obama told the Pittsburgh Tribune. "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."

Barack Obama’s record is clear on guns. He not only supported gun bans, but he supported prosecuting acts of self-defense.

Obama is about as anti-gun as you would expect from a Chicago politician. He voted for assault weapons bans, voted to limit the number of handguns a person could buy, voted against lawsuit protections for gun manufacturers, supported a national ban on concealed carry, and worst of all voted against a bill protecting homeowners from being sued by burglars they shoot in their own homes.

The Audacity Of Deceit

Obama's presidential campaign slogan, "the audacity of hope," should have instead been "the audacity of deceit." After months of telling the American people that he supports the Second Amendment, and only hours after being declared the president-elect, the Obama transition team website announced an agenda taken straight from the anti-gun lobby -- four initiatives designed to ban guns and drive law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers out of business.

Mexico's Role

CIFTA is the proposed Organization of American States treaty on firearms trafficking, known by its Spanish initials as CIFTA. Obama is working to get the CIFTA treaty through the Senate. This push is a result of his recent trip to Mexico and and his claimed attempt to halt to flow of guns into Mexico.

The problem is that Obama is using faulty statistics to push this treaty and infringe upon the right of the American People to keep and bear arms.

Obama says that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico from drug cartels come from the United States. This isn't true. The fact is, nobody really knows. Yes, lots of guns seized in Mexico come from the United States. No question. But that's indicative of a whole other sort of problem. The fact that drug runners can get guns doesn't mean that America should end-run the Second Amendment. That's just poor logic.

Another point is Obama's faulty logic -- that 33 nations in the Western Hemisphere have signed on to this treaty, so it must be good. This is an incorrect conclusion -- those nations do not have a Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Beyond that, since when did the United States of America follow the examples of Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua, and yes, Mexico? It is the United States that should be setting the example here -- not the other way around. This is just an encore performance from Obama's "Hate America Tour, 2009."

Obama has no clue how to help Mexico but sees an opportunity to help his agenda. It is obvious that Obama's teams at the Justice Department and the State Department are exploiting the violence in Mexico to justify more restrictions on gun ownership by Americans. Obama's hostility to the Second Amendment has been clear for years. This may be yet another example of Rahm Emanuel's maxim: "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

In an article written by Rep. Tom Tancredo on April 30th, Tancredo asks the question, "Why the Lies About Guns Going to Mexico? "

The Mexican Ambassador to the United States, Auturo Sarukhan, appeared on a CBS news program recently and repeated a lie we have heard for many months about the violence in Mexico. The ambassador says Americans are to blame for the violence wrecked on his country by the Mexican drug cartels because "most of the guns confiscated by Mexican police can be traced back to the United States. That is not true, but the way that claim has been accepted by American politicians and the mainstream media raises suspicions about a hidden agenda.

ATFE's Fake Number:

We can almost forgive the Mexican ambassador for being confused when the United States agency responsible for enforcing our gun laws, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATFE), has made so many contradictory statements on the matter. ATFE Assistant Director William Hoover told Congress last year that 90% of the weapons seized in Mexico crime scenes can be traced to gun sales in the US.

The problem is that 90% number isn't true. Yet, that hasn't kept it from being picked up and used by members of Congress, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and, of course, Mexican officials like Ambassador Sarukhan who are eager to blame the US for Mexico's problems.

Real Weapons Source:

The 90% number reported by Hoover came from a small group of weapons turned over to the U.S. for tracing, but they were by no means all of the weapons seized by Mexican authorities. A spokesman for the ATFE, Matt Allen, has now "clarified" the number and admitted that only 17% of the weapons found at crime scenes in Mexico have been traced to the U.S. Ironically, while Mexican officials have freely used the 90% number from the ATFE, they have not themselves made such a charge based on their own numbers. The truth is, they know better.

We can easily understand Mexico's reasons for preferring the 90% number to the more accurate 17%. Mexico does not want to openly discuss the many other sources of advanced weapons being used by the drug cartels. Thousands of advanced weapons and tons of military equipment are stolen from its own military and state police. Weapons are smuggled across its southern borders from Guatemala and by boats landing on its 8,000 miles of coastline, weapons that often originate in Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua, or from purchases in Eastern Europe. But it is easier for a Mexican politician to blame the U.S. than to explain his own government's failure to police its borders, its ports of entry and its military installations.

Did the Mexican ambassador mention that over 100,000 soldiers have deserted the Mexican army in the past seven years and that many of them took their weapons with them and joined the cartels?

Continue reading here . . .

Update: Ron Polarik, PhD, observes that whether it's drug cartels, the Army, or the local Politsia, Mexico gets the vast majority of its guns from countries other than the United States.

Care to bet which country supplies the most arms to Latin America? (HINT: Not the US. Not even close)

Percentage of Supplier Deliveries Value by Region, 2000-2007 -- Source: U. S. Government

Supplier Asia Asia Near East Near East Latin America Latin America Africa Africa

2000-2003 2004-2007 2000-2003 2004-2007 2000-2003 2004-2007 2000-2003 2004-2007

United States 33.44% 32.83% 63.46% 62.67% 2.75% 4.00% 0.35% 0.49%

Russia 85.16% 69.19% 10.97% 16.76% 0.65% 10.81% 3.23% 3.24%

France 10.53% 19.51% 85.96% 74.39% 1.75% 4.88% 1.75% 1.22%

United Kingdom 4.00% 6.32% 96.00% 84.21% 0.00% 2.11% 0.00% 7.37%

China 55.17% 56.10% 31.03% 21.95% 0.00% 2.44% 13.79% 19.51%

Germany 64.71% 39.13% 23.53% 13.04% 0.00% 0.00% 11.76% 47.83%

Italy 20.00% 20.00% 20.00% 0.00% 40.00% 20.00% 20.00% 60.00%

All Other European 18.92% 28.26% 58.11% 34.78% 9.46% 26.09% 13.51% 10.87%

All Others 73.03% 61.22% 14.61% 18.37% 4.49% 14.29% 7.87% 6.12%

I received the following information via email and awaiting a source/link:

Since the Constitution says that US treaties are ABOVE the Constitution, Obama can use CIFTA and other treaties to get a bare majority of the Senators to repeal the 2nd Amendment, without going through the arduous process of getting the agreement of 2/3rds of each house of Congress and 3/4ths of the sates; if CIFTA is passed by 51% of the Senate, is the de facto law of the land and presto, our gun rights are GONE.

The Supreme Court has already ruled in a case in California (where a gasoline additive was leaking into the groundwater) that the citizens had no right to sue under the Constitution, because this case involved NAFTA (I don't recall the specific facts, I think it's because the additive was made in Canada).

Liar, Liar Pants On Fire

The "liar, liar pants on fire" argument usually isn't the most effective. But when it comes to guns, Obama is lying through his teeth.

On Thursday, while on a visit to Mexico, Obama continued his Blame America First tour. "This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States," he said, referring to the drug wars that are tearing apart our neighbor to the south. "More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border."

It is completely untrue that 90 percent of guns recovered in Mexico are from America. The Mexican government separates guns it confiscates that were made in the United States and sends them here to be traced. U.S. weapons are easy to identify because of clear markings.

Of the ones sent here to be traced, 90 percent turn out to be from America, but most guns recovered in Mexico are not sent here so are not included in the count. Fox News reported that 17 percent is a more accurate number.

The New York Times, CNN and numerous networks continue to repeat the 90 percent figure with no reporting to back it up. The hysteria is used to create the notion that a major problem exists with American guns -- and Obama is anxious to step in to solve that problem with a $400 million program to stop U.S. guns from going to Mexico. That initiative would include clampdowns on U.S. gun shops.

It is ridiculous for Mr. Obama to blame Mexico's lawlessness on Americans as if the longstanding corruption of Mexican elected officials, judges and law-enforcement officers has nothing to do with it.