Saturday, May 17, 2008

Obama Press Conference In South Dakota

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a video up, of Barack Obama answering questions from reporters about foreign policy, faith initiatives, and guns. Pretty good, as are Ta-Nehisi's comments.

Posted by bjkeefe at 6:36 PM
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2 comments:

Adam said...

As for Obama's comments on guns, there is nothing unusual about what he's saying for a Democrat, but let me tell you what I think is wrong about how the Democratic Party plays up this issue.

Obama says that he thinks that he thinks we should institute some "common sense gun laws so we don't have kids being shot on the streets of cities like Chicago." Illinois generally has the 9th strictest gun laws of all the states in the nation, with Chicago having especially stringent gun laws that basically prohibit any gun ownership within the city limits. So what, exactly, is Obama talking about, that would limit kids being shot on the streets of Chicago.

This kind of coded language where what's really at issue is not what's talked about is what makes Republicans and gun-owner types paranoid about Democrats and why we think that this is the "camel's nose in the tent" whenever the Dems start putting pen to paper on new gun laws. Because the people who are pushing hardest for gun laws, for instance the Brady Campaign people, don't want a few more "common sense gun laws;" according to them, Illinois, which they rank as 9th out of 50 in terms of strictness of gun laws, gets 28 out of 100 points. So apparently in their view Illinois give or take has approximately 1/3 of the legislation over guns that it should.

What legislation like more stringent background checks on legal gun owners has to do with gangbangers in Chicago who never would ever even think about owning a gun legally and probably are either too young, have a criminal record, or both, so they couldn't legally buy a gun if they wanted to, I have no idea. So stop the bullshit and stop conflating the issue.

I'll give Obama this, he's very smooth, and he makes it sound like you barely disagree with him when he's articulating a policy that could, in fact, be diametrically opposed to your interests. If you're a gun owner in South Dakota, you probably don't have to fear Obama having guns banned, but a Clinton-era style waiting period and more stringent Federal checks, rationalized with some imaginary reasoning like it will prevent one homicide in a ghetto, yea, he might be bringing that business up in your face.

9:29 PM, May 17, 2008
bjkeefe said...

We'll never agree on this, but I think it would be a good thing for society overall to make it harder to own a gun, particularly a hand gun. In addition to longer waiting periods and more extensive background checks, I'd like to see regulations that make it easier to trace guns and ammunition back to the original sellers, too.

As you know, I am not in favor of a blanket ban on private gun ownership. However, I would like this to be regulated at the same level as, say, owning and operating a car. It seems to me that it's not too much to ask people who want to own and use guns responsibly to put up with some delays and paperwork. A look at the detailed Brady scorecard (PDF) (available by following your link) suggests that most of what's being asked for is not especially onerous.

Will such measures eliminate all illegally-owned guns and gun-related homicides? Of course not. But it seems to me that it's worth imposing some additional controls in an effort to cut down on these numbers.

6:23 AM, May 21, 2008

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