The chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association has been attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s views on preventing gun violence in an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Washington Times, and again on FOX News.

His charges fit into a pattern of attacks that CNN, The Washington Post, Congressional Quarterly, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and FactCheck.org have called "misleading," "a huge stretch," "intentionally dishonest," "pants on fire wrong," "exaggerated," and that "distort Obama's record on gun control beyond recognition."

On the other hand, he doesn’t say much about the support for common sense gun restrictions once given by Sen. John McCain, a man the NRA used to call "one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment."

The truth?  Sen. Obama has consistently indicated his support for an individual right to own a gun pursuant to the Second Amendment.  He also believes, along with the U.S. Supreme Court, that there can be reasonable restrictions on guns to protect the public.  Like most Americans, Sen. Obama believes we can enforce criminal background checks on all gun sales, crack down on illegal gun dealers, and restrict easy access to military-style semi-automatic assault weapons without infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

As Sen. Obama said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination, "The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals."

So what explains the NRA's "intentionally dishonest" campaign against Sen. Obama?  Two things seem important: the U.S. Supreme Court and economic concerns.

Ironically, it may have been Justice Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court that stripped NRA bosses of their long-time weapon used to scare voters about candidates: "They're going to take your guns away!" When the Court in June declared an individual right to own a gun for self defense in the home, the gun issue began to lose its status as a "wedge" issue almost overnight.  We see this today where the NRA is spending millions of dollars across the country and Sen. Obama remains competitive in traditional "gun rights" states from Virginia to Nevada.

In short, people know that nobody’s going to "take their guns away" particularly because the Supreme Court said so.

Ironically for the NRA, however, while Justice Scalia said that total gun bans are "off the table," he also outlined an array of common sense gun policies that he said were “presumptively lawful.�  Some examples he cited are laws against carrying concealed weapons, laws against "dangerous and unusual weapons," and laws against taking guns into "sensitive places" like schools and government buildings.  Surprisingly, the country's best-known conservative Justice may have sounded the death knell for the gun lobby's campaign of divisive wedge politics.

In addition, the nation's sagging economy has also clearly taken center stage since the Supreme Court's decision in June.  Americans concerned about paying their mortgage, filling the gas tank, paying for college, and finding affordable health care for their children and elderly parents, probably aren't as receptive or concerned about all the misleading charges about Sen. Obama and guns.  A lot less individuals are "single-issue" voters in today's complex world.

These two events cannot be taken in isolation.  The economic pressures Americans feel are real; but because the Supreme Court made it clear that law-abiding citizens' guns are safe, gun owners are less likely to be swayed by appeals to their fears on this single issue, rather than their hopes for the country. Finding themselves in this political box, NRA leaders are stuck with just one option: tell lies over and over again about Barack Obama and hope voters buy it one last time.

So far, however, they aren't.  Sen. Obama's message of finding a middle ground to solve America's problems is resonating across the country – not only about the gun issue, but on the whole range of issues facing this country today.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

This is the America we live in today.

The one where no gunfire is news.

From the AP:

Virginia Tech police say there were no gunshots fired near a residence hall on campus.

Authorities locked down a dorm Thursday afternoon after two people reported hearing something that sounded like gunfire. Police are still investigating.

A university spokesman said the sounds may have come from a construction site nearby.

Police from Virginia Tech and nearby departments searched every room of Pritchard Hall, a dorm on the Blacksburg campus that is home to 1,000 students. No one was allowed in or out of the dorm, but the entire campus was not locked down.

In 2007, 32 people were killed by a gunman on campus who later killed himself.

Some things you just can't make up.

First, from the AP (via TPM):

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

...

Broun said he believes Obama would move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national security force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."[more]

Discussing this episode over at Reason Online, David Weigel described Rep. Broun's, er, position as:

...another fringe position, but it's one egged on by the NRA, which warned gun owners that a President Obama would literally rip their firearms from their warm, living hands.

Jake Tapper, in that last link, calls this "Obama Derangement Syndrome." I think this is some of the first anti-Obama wackadoodlry that isn't specific to the candidate. This was the language used to scare the fringe right about the last Democratic president, too. It's incredibl[y] dumb and off-putting, not to mention wrong....

Feeling some of the heat his comments had ignited, yesterday Rep. Broun went on WGAC radio to express "regret" for his comments.

Via the AJC:

BROUN: I regret saying it that way. Yes, I do. I apologize to anybody that’s taken offense at that.

The point I tried to make is that he is extremely liberal, he has promoted a lot of socialistic ideas, and it just makes me concerned.

I’m hoping he’s going to govern differently from the way he’s stating things as a candidate…I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude. I’m not throwing any stones.
...

BROUN: In fact, when the lady at the Rotary Club took me to task for saying that Obama was a Marxist, I tried to correct it at that point, and [the Augusta Chronicle reporter] didn’t ever make the point that I made — that I thought that he had a Marxist position on a lot of issues, and I’m just concerned about it.

Perhaps at this point, Rep. Broun could:

(1) Consult a University in his district to learn why "Marxist Nazi" is an oxymoron; and

(2) Switch to decaf.

Here's Keith Olbermann on the subject (at about 1:47):

How, exactly, does the National Rifle Association explain its almost total impotence this election year?

President-elect Obama beat the NRA leadersip in their home state of Virginia, plus ruby-red states like Indiana, North Carolina, and Nevada, and soundly defeated them in Pennsylvania (with the highest per-capita NRA membership), Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico and New Hampshire.

From the AP (via TPM):

President-elect Obama has won North Carolina, a symbolic triumph in a state that hadn't voted for a Democrat in more than a generation.

The Associated Press declared Obama the winner Thursday after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots.

That survey found that there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican John McCain to close a 13,693-vote deficit.

North Carolina's 15 electoral votes brings Obama's total to 364 — nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call.

Obama's win in North Carolina was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976.

A letter to the Editor of the High Country News in Colorado:

God and Guns

Kudos to Jonathan Thompson, who will surely get plenty of negative responses to his editor's note in Volume 40, Number 19, from numerous fundamentalists whose understanding of the First Amendment is nearly nonexistent (HCN, 10/27/08). I'm happy to have a Constitution that, at least on paper, allows everyone to worship whatever deity or higher power they choose, and at the same time protects me from the frequently malevolent intellectual suffocation of fundamentalists (including the kindly and "well-meaning") of every religious stripe. That those protections do not always operate as I'd like them to in the real world, as Ray Ring's article suggests, is merely a reminder that religious oppression has been around at least as long as political oppression, and has been no more humane in its treatment of dissenters than political regimes we've been taught to despise.

As for Democrats abandoning gun control, I'm not in a position to predict, though I admit I'd be surprised if they did, and I'm not sure we "all" need them to do so. I have several firearms, both long arms and pistols, that I've owned for many years. I've considered joining the NRA, but have always decided against it because of the organization's stands on other issues, as well as its refusal to acknowledge the very obvious and very real dangers of a gun-happy society. Hal Herring at least points out some of the contradictions of "pro-gun" zealots whose version of the Constitution includes trampling on the numerous rights of others to secure a specific one of their own.

I do question one of Mr. Herring's statements in defense of gun ownership as a hedge, if you will, against tyranny. He suggests, if I'm reading him properly, that we have less to fear from an armed populace than from anything the future might hold. Even if I grant Herring the benefit of the doubt regarding America's future, an examination of murder statistics in the U.S., and the weapons used to commit them, suggests to me that we have quite a bit to fear from our current armed populace, else my local police would not need Kevlar vests as part of their standard equipment.

Ray Schoch
Lakewood, Colorado

Not sure who Mr. Schoch voted for, but his letter ran on Election Day, when President-elect Obama carried Colorado by almost 7 points, and Brady Campaign-endorsed Democratic Rep. Mark Udall defeated NRA-endorsed Republican former Rep. Bob Schaffer by 8.5 points, in the U.S. Senate race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Wayne Allard.

See all of the Brady Campaign's election victories this year at http://www.bradyvoter.org/endorsements.php.