For example, when Obama ran for the Illinois state senate the political group, Independent Voters of Illinois (IVI), asked him if he supported a “ban [on] the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns” and he responded
“yes.”
Realizing how damaging this could prove in the general election, his presidential campaign
“flatly denied” Obama ever held this view, blaming it instead on a staffer from his state senate race.
But then IVI
provided Politico the questionnaire with Obama’s own handwritten notes revising another answer. Members of IVI’s board of directors, some of whom have worked on Obama’s past campaigns, told Politico that “I always believed those to be his views, what he really believes in, and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.”
But the IVI questionnaire isn’t the only one out there.
In 1998, another questionnaire administered by IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test didn’t ask about banning all handguns, but it did find that Obama
wanted to “ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.”
Indeed, such a ban would outlaw virtually all handguns and the vast majority of rifles sold in the United States.
In addition, from 1998 to 2001, Obama was on the
board of directors for the Joyce Foundation, which
funded such anti-gun groups as the Violence Policy Center, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, and Handgun Free America. Both the Violence Policy Center and Handgun Free America, as its name suggests, are in favor of a complete ban on handguns. During his tenure on the board, the Joyce Foundation was probably the major funder of pro-control research in the United States.
In fact, I knew Obama during the mid-1990s, and his answers to IVI’s question on guns fit well with the Obama that I knew. Indeed, the first time I introduced myself to him he said “Oh, you are the gun guy.”
I responded “Yes, I guess so.” He simply responded that “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.”
When I said it might be fun to talk about the question sometime and about his support of the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against the gun makers, he simply grimaced and turned away, ending the conversation.
If taken literally, Obama’s statement to me was closer to what the IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test found, indicating that Obama's bans would extend well beyond handguns.
Obama also
opposes the current laws in 48 states that let citizens carry concealed handguns for protection claiming,
despite all the academic studies to the contrary, that "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."
Even Hillary Clinton
disagrees with him on this.
Originally Posted by yermom
