BARACK'S GUN-RIGHTS BLUSTER

by Robert Novak

April 7, 2008 -- "Barack Obama, who informs campaign audiences that he taught constitutional law for 10 years, might be expected to weigh in on the historic Second Amendment case before the US Supreme Court. The justices are pondering whether the 1976 District of Columbia law effectively prohibiting personal gun ownership in the nation's capital is constitutional. But Sen. Obama has not stated his position.

Obama, disagreeing with the DC government and gun-control advocates, declares the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms" applies to individuals, not just the "well-regulated militia" cited in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts this constitutional guarantee doesn't preclude local "common-sense" restrictions on firearms.

But does the Draconian prohibition for Washington, DC, fit that description? My attempts to get an answer have proved unavailing. Obama is doing the gun dance.

That is a dance of many Democratic strategists. As urban liberals, they reject constitutional protection for gun owners. As campaign managers, they want to avoid re-enacting the fate of many candidates who lost elections because of gun-control advocacy. The party's House leadership last year pulled off the floor a bill for a District of Columbia congressional seat in order to save Democratic members from having to vote on a Republican amendment against the DC gun law.

Hillary Clinton has extolled the Second Amendment, though not as far as Obama. Campaigning at Iowa's Cornell College Dec. 5, he asserted that the Second Amendment "is an individual right and not just a right of the militia." He repeated that formulation along the primary trail, declaring at a Milwaukee press conference before the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary: "I believe the Second Amendment means something . . . There is an individual right to bear arms."

That implies that the DC gun law is unconstitutional. Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty's brief to the Supreme Court rests on the proposition that the Second Amendment "protects the possession and use of guns only in service of an organized militia." Consequently, I deduced in a March 13 column about the case that Obama had "weighed in against the DC law."

On March 24, a reader e-mailed The Washington Post that "Obama supports the DC law" and demanded a correction. That was based on an Associated Press account of Obama's Milwaukee press conference asserting that "he voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns." In fact, all he said he was: "The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun-safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our Constitution."

That leaves Obama undisclosed on the DC law. In response to my inquiry about his position, Obama's campaign e-mailed me a one paragraph answer: Obama believes that while the "Second Amendment creates an individual right . . . he also believes that the Constitution permits federal, state and local government to adopt reasonable and common-sense gun safety measures." Though the paragraph is titled "Obama on the DC Court case," the gun ban is never mentioned. I tried again, without success, last week to learn Obama's position before writing this column.

Obama's dance on gun rights is part of his evolution from a radical young state legislator a few years ago. He was recorded in a 1996 questionnaire as advocating a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns (a position since disavowed). He was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which takes an aggressive gun-control position, and in 2000 considered becoming its full-time president. In 2006, he voted with an 84-to-16 majority (and against Clinton) to prohibit confiscation of firearms during an emergency, but that's his only pro-gun vote in Springfield or Washington. The National Rifle Association (NRA) grades him (and Clinton) at "F."

There is no anti-gun litmus test for Democrats. In 2006, Ted Strickland was elected governor of Ohio and Bob Casey US senator from Pennsylvania with NRA grades of "A." Following their model, Obama talks about the rights of "Americans to protect their families." He hasn't yet stated whether that right should exist in Washington, DC."

And he won't.

What he will continue to do is dance around the issue, because one cannot be a card-carrying liberal and profess a love for either the Constitution or liberty. But, to get elected on any national ticket, it is imperative to at least appear to be open-minded, hence the Obo-Shuffle.

ALL that either Skankles or Obo need do is once and for all state that yes, the D.C. ban is unconstitutional and should be stricken from the record in favor of a "common-sense" law, but they cannot even bring themselves to do something as seemingly innocuous as that.

Remember; they HAVE no core values. None. Every move they make is predicated upon how many people will vote for them and one of the ways to win is to stay out of a serious debate on anything.