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(from Freedom and Reason)
Obama and the Personal Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Boston Globe characterizes it this way: "Barack Obama's dizzyingly inconsistent positions on District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment case decided by the Supreme Court last week."

They noted that during his run for the Illinois Legislature, Obama supported legislation to "ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns." During much of his campaign for president, he endorsed the DC gun law, which banned handguns. He said in November 2007 that the DC handgun ban was constitutional. He was asked in February 2008 about whether he supported the DC ban and he said he did.

Since the Second Amendment does not assert the right of individuals to keep and bear arms - except in the context of a well-regulated militia - Obama's position was consistent with the intent of the framers. Whether persons can own firearms for their person use is for the states to decide. The decision is among the powers granted to them by the Tenth Amendment.

Obama appears to have flipped flopped on the issue soon after February. By March he no longer thought the DC gun ban was constitutional, but he didn't explain why. In April, he punted on the question with the standard "I obviously haven't listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence."

When the court overturned the ban and stated, for the first time in US history, that individuals had a person right to keep and bear arms (thus inventing a right where none had previously existed), Obama acted as if his conviction that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms, and that there the DC gun ban was unconstitutional, was vindicated. "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms," he said.

But he could not possibly have always believed that, since he said the DC gun ban was constitutional.

Why did Obama flip? No doubt he looked at the polls showing that more than 70 percent of Americans believe the Second Amendment confers a personal right. The same percentage oppose making guns illegal. He look at the fact that half of all households own guns. So, as with so many other things, Obama changed his position to fit public opinion.