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NRA Lying About Obama's Record

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Damascus
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« on: October 09, 2008, 03:31:16 pm »

Despite NRA's claims, Obama won't take guns
By RAY SCHOENKE • August 22, 2008

Gov. Brian Schweitzer is right:

As for Obama, Schweitzer said, "He ain't going to take your gun away. He ain't ever going to take your gun away."
Obama doesn't want to take your gun away. But, that won't stop the very partisan leaders of the NRA from lying about Obama. That's how those NRA leaders operate these days. They put partisan interests over the best interests of America's hunters and shooters. There's a reason the NRA has right-wing leaders like Grover Norquist and David Keene on its board. They're more interested in conservative political victories than the interests of America's gun owners.
Let's be honest: The recent Supreme Court case on the D.C. gun ban established once and for all that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms, particularly for self-defense. The issue has been decided. No one is going to take anyone's gun away.
In the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama had the chance to vote for gun confiscation. He voted forthrightly against it. Even before the Supreme Court ruling, Obama was very clear that he viewed the Second Amendment as an individual right.
But that doesn't stop the NRA's public relations machine from trying to gin up their members to send money to defeat Obama. Ben Smith at the Politico found a host of distortions of Obama's record in a recent NRA email, noting that the email "included a wallet card listing what the NRA claims are Obama's positions on guns, though they are not in fact his campaign positions, and in many cases it seems flatly to contradict them. The NRA claims Obama wants to bar the use of firearms for home defense and ban the manufacture and sale of handguns. How the group reaches those conclusions is unclear."
Unclear is a nicer way of saying not true.
A new poll shows strong support for Obama among sportsmen. This may be "surprising" to some, but not to me:
Few hunters are pining for a day in the woods with Barack Obama but a surprising number of sportsmen say they'll vote for him — far more than backed Al Gore or pheasant-hunting John Kerry.
According to a Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation poll to be released last week, John McCain leads Obama by 45 to 31 percent. That's only about half the 27-point edge respondents say they gave George W. Bush over Kerry four years ago and far short of the 65-to-15 percent margin gun owners gave to Bush over Gore in 2000.
The poll of 1,009 hunters and fishermen, conducted by Braun Research between July 10 and July 24, could be a reflection of McCain's up-and-down relationship with gun advocates and suggests the presumptive GOP nominee has not yet persuaded a core Republican constituency.
This poll confirms that the days of the NRA's leaders calling the shots are over.
I'm the president of a gun rights group, the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a lifelong hunter and a committed conservationist. Those three go together.
True sportsmen and women, those of us who spend time in the outdoors, know we need a president who is looking out for our interests.
We haven't had one for the past eight years. At a time when hunters and shooters are worried about issues like protecting wildlife habitat so we can have something to hunt, improving hunting access, keeping roadless lands roadless, preventing the selling off of public lands, and many other conservation issues threatening the future of hunting; the leadership of the NRA is engaged in obvious distortions of the truth.
And, the NRA is dealing with its own brewing scandal. Before Wayne LaPierre casts any more aspersions on Barack Obama, he needs to come clean about the NRA's involvement with his own spying scandal.
Yes, while gun owners have been looking for leadership, the actual leaders of the National Rifle Association have become enmeshed in a spy scandal worthy of the Nixon administration.
In the weeks since Mother Jones revealed that the NRA had a hired a private investigation firm to hire a spy to join the board of their opposition, the NRA has refused to answer any questions about their secret tactics.
It's sickening that Wayne LaPierre won't come clean about revelations that showed they hired a spy to infiltrate the gun control groups. There are serious allegations of misconduct — with possible legal ramifications — being asserted against the leadership of the NRA and American gun owners deserve answers.
Yet, the silence from the NRA in the wake of the allegations against them is deafening. If the NRA used its members' dues to pay for a spy in the gun control movement, there could well be violations of federal and state laws. The members of the NRA deserve a modicum of honesty and integrity on the part of their leaders. America's gun owners are waiting.
America's gun owners also deserve honest answers about Obama's record. If the choice is listening to Gov. Brian Schweitzer or Wayne LaPierre/Grover Norquist or the less than honorable NRA leadership, I'll trust Schweitzer any day.
Ray Schoenke is president of the American Hunters and Shooters Association.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008808220351
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