February 24, 2009 – Remember back in February 2008 when President Obama came to Boise and spoke at a big rally? He made a big point of saying, “I won’t take away your guns,” because those nasty, dishonest Republicans were saying that Obama was going to do that.

It sure didn’t take long for Obama to reveal his intentions. The afternoon of the inauguration, the White House Web site’s Urban Policy page admitted that he is indeed going to try and do exactly that. “Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.”

I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt about whether closing the “gun show loophole” violates the Second Amendment. (There really isn’t any “gun show loophole” – gun dealers have to do the same paperwork at a gun show as they do at their shop; this is really the private party sale loophole.). There are ways to fix this that aren’t necessarily a violation of our rights.

It is impossible to make guns “childproof” without making them adultproof. So far, I have seen no technology that works well enough to do one without doing the other. That’s why many of the proposed laws requiring “childproof” gun technology exempt guns sold to police departments. Police department guns have to work reliably; civilians defending themselves from criminals, obviously, don’t need reliable guns, because criminals will stop their attack when they realize that you are having a malfunction.

The assault weapons ban, however, is clearly an attempt to take away guns. It is not an attempt to keep guns out of the hands of criminals; convicted felons can’t legally possess a gun or ammunition. It is an attempt to disarm law-abiding adults of the one category of firearm most clearly protected by the Second Amendment – those that would be suitable for overthrowing a tyrannical government. (Those Democrats who were ranting and raving last year about how President Bush was going to call off the 2008 elections and make himself dictator might want to ask what you would have done in that situation. Would you have written angry letters to the White House?)

So far, it appears that President Obama misled the hard left wing of the Democratic Party about where he was going to go on foreign policy – at least, judging by his picks for Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense. But he did more than mislead Idahoans when he said, “I won’t take away your guns.” He lied to us.

Clayton E. Cramer is a historian in Horseshoe Bend whose work was cited in D.C. v. Heller (2008), striking down D.C.’s gun control ban earlier this year.

Originally published in the Idaho Statesman, February 22, 2009.

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