Obama seeks common ground on guns
Alexander Bolton
The Hill
3/13/2011
President Obama on Sunday called for gun-rights advocates and proponents of gun control to find common ground two months after the shooting which killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
The Arizona Daily Star published an op-ed by Obama on Sunday calling for stronger restrictions on gun sales to buyers suspected of mental instability.
“A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun,” Obama wrote of Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Giffords and 19 other people, six fatally.
Obama said the vast majority of gun owners are “highly responsible” and recognized the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to bear arms.
He said gun-control advocates need to recognize this, but gun owners need to accept, in turn, that some rules needs to be tightened… [Emphasis CAJ]
The article continues at The Hill.
Obama Aims in the Wrong Direction on Gun Control:
“I’m willing to bet that responsible, law-abiding gun owners agree that we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few – dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example – from getting their hands on a gun in the first place.”
But here comes the ironic part. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms was recently busted for allowing Mexican drug cartels to supply themselves with thousands of weapons used to kill tens of thousands of innocents in Mexico and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Southern Arizona. ATF approved the sales of these weapons after gun shop owners, who were following the current laws, reported the mass sales of weapons such as the AK-47, and ATF gave them the green light. That’s right, ATF was literally watching murderers purchase the weapons they needed to kill people. It is pretty difficult to keep guns out of the hands of criminals when the government gives them the go-ahead…
The Loughner Panic:
Two hours after a deranged college dropout named Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on a congresswoman’s meet-and-greet outside a Tucson supermarket, killing six and wounding 13 others, the influential progressive blogger Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas fouled Twitter with this grotesque message: “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Several hours later The New York Times reported in its front-page coverage that the massacre “set off what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger and violence in American politics.” We soon got a rather different “wrenching debate,” over the media’s rush to blame the violence on political rhetoric, especially the right-of-center variety.
This wasn’t the first time during Barack Obama’s presidency that Republicans, Tea Partiers, and libertarians were blamed for the murderous rampage of a gunman who was none of the above. Nor is it likely to be the last. But the post-massacre recriminations illuminated the sickness of our political discourse, including the instinct to grasp at “solutions” requiring that we surrender still more of our freedoms to a sporadically competent state…
At the Huffington Post,Obama Looking For Ways Around Congress On Gun Policy:
WASHINGTON — Faced with a Congress hostile to even slight restrictions of Second Amendment rights, the Obama administration is exploring potential changes to gun laws that can be secured strictly through executive action, administration officials say. [Emphasis CAJ]
The Department of Justice held the first in what is expected to be a series of meetings on Tuesday afternoon with a group of stakeholders in the ongoing gun-policy debates. Before the meeting, officials said part of the discussion was expected to center around the White House’s options for shaping policy on its own or through its adjoining agencies and departments — on issues ranging from beefing up background checks to encouraging better data-sharing…
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