The Liberty Papers

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Barack Obama said Friday that the country must do “whatever it takes” to eradicate gun violence following a campus shooting in his home state, but he believes in an individual’s right to bear arms.

Obama said he spoke to Northern Illinois University’s president Friday morning by phone and offered whatever help his Senate office could provide in the investigation and improving campus security. The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about the Illinois shooting to reporters while campaigning in neighboring Wisconsin.

The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees gun ownerships only to militias, but he believes it grants individual gun rights.

When I ran across the headline’s article “Obama supports individual gun rights” in The Rocky Mountain News, I knew I had to read further. So far, so good…so what:

“I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it’s subject to commonsense regulation” like background checks, [Obama] said during a news conference.”

He said he would support federal legislation based on a California law that would facilitate immediate tracing of bullets used in a crime. He said even though the California law was passed over the strong objection of the National Rifle Association, he thinks it’s the type of law that gun owners and crime victims can get behind.

To be honest, I don’t know anything about this particular policy [if anyone can give me a Cliff’s Notes version, please fill me in]. Being able to trace bullets used in a crime back to a particular firearm…I thought this was already an accepted, common practice? I must be missing something; clearly if the NRA is opposed to this policy maybe we should look at it.

So Obama believes that the right to bear arms is an individual right (more than we can say about most Democrats) but also believes in “common sense regulation.” Surely, Obama would not consider the D.C. gun ban to be common sense…or would he?

Although Obama supports gun control, while campaigning in gun-friendly Idaho earlier this month, he said he does not intend to take away people’s guns.

At his news conference, he voiced support for the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.

“The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can’t initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn’t born [sic] out by our Constitution,” Obama said.

Now I’m really confused! The only thing I can figure is that Obama’s views on gun rights are based on what he thinks his supporters want to hear at any given moment (in other words, he’s being a politician). Obama’s comments also reveal a fundamental misunderstanding about the Constitution on his part. The right to bear arms, or any of the other rights found in the Constitution for that matter, are not “born out” of the Constitution; the Constitution merely recognizes individual rights which already exist.

Given these seemingly contradictory statements, one wonders what policies an Obama administration would support and what sort of judicial appointments Obama would make with regard to the 2nd Amendment.

***Correction***

Brad pointed out that the journalist likely misinterpreted Obama’s statement:

The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can’t initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn’t born [sic] out by our Constitution.

What Obama likely meant was “borne out by our Constitution” meaning “supported by our Constitution” rather than “born of our Constitution.” While Brad and I both disagree with Obama on this point even as he likely intended it, I think it’s important that we try to represent the senator’s remarks accurately.

Elsewhere in the article there was this:

The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees gun ownerships only to militias, but he believes it grants individual gun rights.

Here again, it’s the journalist’s interpretation (Nedra Pickler in this case) of what she thought Obama said. Hopefully, Obama knows better since he is a former constitutional law instructor (though I’m sure that there are many constitutional law instructors who actually do believe the Constitution grants rights rather than recognizes their existence). The only way to determine if the journalist correctly interpreted Obama’s speech would be to find a transcript of the speech. So far, I have been unable to find one but when I do I will link the transcript to this post so readers can decide for themselves whether Pickler’s interpretation of Obama’s speech is correct or not.