'Barack Obama Supports Gun Rights'

Jacob Sullum | October 8, 2008

Barack Obama has another ad, this one a TV spot featuring a life member of the NRA, attesting to his support for Second Amendment rights. CBS reports that the ad is running in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. "Barack Obama supports gun rights, our right to defend ourselves, the Second Amendment," the narrator says. "That's the truth."

Is it? Obama's reading of the Second Amendment is so narrow that he sees no constitutional problem with the Washington, D.C., gun ban that was overturned by the Supreme Court or a similar law in Chicago. Maybe he supports the right to own a disassembled rifle and the right to defend ourselves with pointy sticks, but in practice his position is pretty much the same as that of gun controllers who continue to insist that the Second Amendment protects no rights the government need respect.

Meanwhile, the NRA is stepping up its anti-Obama ad campaign, which I discuss here and here.

[via Trey Garrison]