Say Anything Blog

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein has unearthed a disturbing set of proposals offered by then-state Senator Barack Obama in 1999 regarding the regulation of privately owned firearms.  The followig quote is from the December 13, 1999 edition of The Chicago Defender:

Obama outlined his anti-gun plan that includes increased penalties for the interstate transportation of firearms. The maximum penalty now for bringing a gun across the border is 10 years in prison. Obama is proposing to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home. [!!!]

He’s proposing restricting gun purchases to one weapon a month and banning the sale of firearms at gun shows except for “antique” weapons. Obama is also proposing increasing the licensing fee to obtain a federal firearms license.

He’s also seeking a ban on police agencies from reselling their used weapons even if those funds are used to buy more state-of-the-art weapons for their agencies. Obama wants only those over 21 who’ve passed a basic course to be able to buy or own a firearm.

He’s proposing that all federally licensed gun dealers sell firearms in a storefront and not from their homes while banning their business from being within five miles of a school or a park. He’s also banning the sale of ‘junk” handguns like the popular Saturday Night Specials.

Obama is requiring that all people working at a gun dealer undergo a criminal background check. He’s also asking that gun manufacturers be required to develop safety measures that permit only the original owner of the firearm to operate the weapon purchased.

Additionally, he wants an increase of the funds for schools to teach anger management skills for youth between the ages of 5-13. Obama is also seeking to increase the federal taxes by 500 percent on the sale of firearm, ammunition [sic]—weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths.

In even the most modest metropolitan or suburban area, it would be next to impossible to find a storefront that was more than 5 miles from either a school or a park, so this proposal would put many legitimate dealers effectively out of business entirely.

Increasing federal taxes 500% is clearly meant to discourage and punish gun buyers.  But once again, those effected would be the law-abiding citizens.  Meanwhile, as any diligent 1st year econ student will tell you, raising prices on a commodity also has the effect of encouraging the illicit, black market sales of that commodity… black market sales which in this case would be to the criminals these proposals are supposed to prevent in the first place.

Mr. Obama may bill himself as an agent of change and a unifier.  But the reality is that the direction of the change he would foster is clearly hard to the left.

Think about this for a moment: If a conservative candidate had advocated policies as blithely and callously contemptuous of the First Amendment as Obama’s are toward the Second, the howls of indignation from the media alone would be dangerous to one’s hearing.  No matter what the media tells us, John McCain should have no trouble winning against someone as radically leftwing as Obama in November.