True North

Over the past few years - perhaps because he’s been eying national office - Barack Obama has been cleaning up his act on guns.

It’s not a huge surprise; guns have been a third rail for the Dems for about a decade.  The ‘94 “Crime Bill”, with its draconian, capricious intrusions into the rights of the law-abiding gun owner, mobilized the long-sleeping giant of the NRA, whose membership soared through the roof.  The gun owner was a very significant part of the Gingrich Revolution (and was probably what put Rod Grams over the top against Ann Wynia that year).  ‘94 was the year Minnesota’s Gun Owner’s Civil Rights Alliance (and its child, Concealed Carry Reform Now) hit their stride, and began the most successful bit of grassroots politics in recent Minnesota history - the ten year battle of the common, bipartisan, law-abiding citizen against the soulless bureaucrat, the snivelling elitist, and the racist pettifoggers who’d bedeviled them. It’s been one victory after another since then - and if the SCOTUS’ Heller decision breaks the right way later this month, the best may yet be to come.

Against this backdrop, of course Obama is going to make nice.

Given his past history, according to James Taranto, it’s probably good that we work our butts off to keep it that way.

Back in April, columnist Robert Novak noted that Barack Obama was performing a “dance” on the topic of gun rights:

Obama, disagreeing with the D.C. government and gun control advocates, declares that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applies to individuals, not just the “well regulated militia” in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts that this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local “common sense” restrictions on firearms.

The government of the District of Columbia is defending a gun ban before the Supreme Court, with a decision expected this month.

Now, I don’t mind if a guy changes his mind - in the right direction.

Of course, that which flips might eventully flop, when it becomes expedient.

As, for Obama, it once was:

The National Rifle Association Web site has a list of those “common sense” restrictions Obama has favored. One of them caught the eye of blogger David Hardy:

Barack Obama supported a proposal to ban gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park, which would eliminate almost every gun store in America.

…Five miles? As Hardy notes, the effect of this would be to “eliminate almost every gun store in America.”…

…The proposal Obama endorsed in 1999 would have banned gun stores within five miles, or 26,400 feet, of a school. Imagine the same maps with each of those circles 10 miles across. Gun stores would be permitted only in the most remote rural areas–and only if there is also no park within five miles.

The Defender article also reported that Obama proposed “to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home.”

The point, of course, is to save the flip, prevent the flop:

To be sure, these are positions Obama took as a state legislator. It is unlikely that he would stand by them today, and even unlikelier that Congress would enact them. But it does lead one to think that Obama’s instinct is to trash, rather than protect, the Constitution.

It’s all back there somewhere.

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.