Obama's Real Position on Guns

[Herb Schaffler]

From Huffington Post:
It is a quintessential example of political irony.
Just hours before Sen. Barack Obama uttered his now famous "bitter" comments, suggesting that small town Americans had turned to guns and religion out of economic frustration, he appeared at a different private event and offered a much more nuanced, sympathetic interpretation of gun ownership.
That quote, however, never made it public. And since then, "bitter-gate" metastasized into Obama's biggest liability -- the perception that he is out of touch with average Americans now a key concern for many voters and political kindling for the Senator's opponents.
But is it fair?
Obama argued at the time that his sentiment was correct but his words were not. "What I was saying is that when economic hardship hits in these communities, what people have is they've got family, they've got their faith, they've got the traditions that have been passed onto them from generation to generation," he said shortly after the remarks were made public. "Those aren't bad things. That's what they have left."
And indeed, evidence suggests that, at least when it came to guns, Obama's bitter comment was a true deviation. In the private event just prior to [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , Obama offered an interpretation of Second Amendment rights likely to go over smoother with rural America.
"We need sensible gun laws," said the Senator. "I just got back from Montana where just about everyone has guns. In that culture, fathers and sons bond over hunting. You can't take that away from rural America. But the inner city is different, and we should tighten the laws on gun purchases and close the loopholes in gun show sales to unscrupulous buyers. The gun control people and the right to bear arms people are talking past each other about disconnected topics."
The remarks, delivered at an event in Silicon Valley and shared with The Huffington Post by an attendee, suggest that even in private, Obama's view of gun ownership is far from the condescending anti-Second Amendment characterization that his critics have painted. Rather, they imply that Obama actually does view the right to bear arms as a personal tradition passed through generations, but one that does not necessarily comport to every geographic region.