Barack Obama embraces new gun control

I've written a great deal about civil liberties -- and certainly on the matter of gun rights.  I'm not going to belabor the latter point anymore on these lists but Barack Obama's statements in New Orleans yesterday denouncing "military assault rifles" in the context of the Aurora tragedy do warrant clarifying comment.

The weapon  of which he speaks is NOT a military weapon -- something that I've explained patiently and otherwise a  great many times since the ascendancy of Bill Clinton.  It's a semi-automatic weapon, structurally no different than a .22 semi-automatic from Wal Mart.  This means that the trigger has to be pulled each time in order to fire a shot.  Fully automatic weapons -- and that includes genuine military assault weapons -- have been banned for civilian use since 1934.

The "military assault weapon" used by Holmes at Aurora was simply a conventional semi-automatic dressed up in superficial military garb.  The Obama administration and a whole lot of other people in  both parties are well aware of this distinction between phony military assault rifles and the real ones -- cloistered liberals often are not or don't want to be -- but the distinction, as was the case with the Clinton administration, is now once again being deliberately blurred.  Until Aurora and the mainline media talk of "gun control", we had several years of accurate reference to the phony ones as semi-automatic in nature.  So, to repeat, this has gone back into Clinton nomenclature.
 
At this point, Barack Obama has signaled that he's definitely on the side of new gun control measures.  As most gun rights people, and other thoughtful civil libertarians in general certainly know, the erosion of civil liberty usually begins with trying to "pick off" the least popular Something, however legal that may be -- and then go on from there.

If I were a Democratic candidate anywhere between the Bay Area and New York City, I'd be concerned about this Obama development.

H


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
And see My Community Organizing Mini-Course -- with much 
down to earth how-to material and updated into 2012:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm