Barack Obama knows that to win the election, he must sway middle-class, middle-America voters.  He knows also that the Democrats were hit hard in the 1990’s and the 2000 presidential election due to the Clinton-era gun bans and stringent gun control legislation, which raised the question of gun control to a litmus test equivalent to abortion, prayer in schools, and gay rights. 

Obama and his campaign have accordingly been claiming that he supports the Second Amendment and endorses the view that gun ownership is an individual right - albeit one apparently subject to almost limitless restriction in his view, or at the very least, limited only to certain shotguns used for hunting.  His past record, however, belies his recent claims of a new-found belief in gun rights.  Obama was, for nearly eight years, on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation, the single largest supporter and provider of funds for anti-gun groups, backed by well-known left-wing billionaire George Soros.

During Obama’s tenure with the Joyce Foundation, donations to anti-gun groups increased dramatically. For example, in 1997 and 1998 the Violence Policy Center received $221,000 and $360,000 from the Foundation; those grants and donations increased to $1 million in 2000 and $800,000 in 2002. In all, during Obama’s tenure, the group received $15 million from the Joyce Foundation.

The Violence Policy Center touts itself as “the most aggressive group in the gun control movement”.  The Joyce Foundation also made hefty contributions to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, which is anti-gun and pro-gun control, as well as the Brady Campaign, which possibly is the most well-known anti-gun group.

Also during Obama’s tenure on the board, the Joyce Foundation engaged in an orchestrated campaign to influence public perception, policy and legislation by paying law professors to write, and paying law reviews to publish, “scholarly” articles concluding that the Second Amendment does not and never has protected an individual right.  The Foundation hoped to pave the way to a rejection of the individual rights view in a future Supreme Court case it knew was inevitable.  The Joyce Foundation funded symposia to which only law professors known to hold a “collective right” view of the Second Amendment were invited.  When individual right proponents requested to attend, they were rejected, explicitly being told that “sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium”.

The Joyce Foundation also bought up issues of the Fordham Law law review, Chicago-Kent Law Review and Stanford Law and Policy Review, inviting submissions from only those professors willing to write articles concluding that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right.  It did this by paying the law review and the professors amounts far in excess - in some cases ten times - the normal stipend or honorarium paid to a law review article author.  Some of the other pro-gun control organizations that the Joyce Foundation has funded include:

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition
Firearms Law Center (now Legal Community Against Violence)
Franklin County Prevention Institute
Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) Network
Indiana Partnership to Prevent Firearm Violence
Legal Community Against Violence (formerly Firearms Law Center)
Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence
On-Target Coalition
Second Amendment Research Center[14]
Violence Policy Center: $4,154,970 between 1996 and 2006.
WAVE Educational fund
Workforce Strategy Center

Within the last few days, the Obama campaign in Indiana illegally acquired a mailing list belonging to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and used it to send unsolicited e-mail and letters to people who had attended NSSF’s Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, again touting Obama’s support of “hunting and fishing.“  NSSF has sent the campaign a letter directing it to cease and desist its illegal use of NSSF’s proprietary mailing list.  It is possible that the actions of the Obama campaign not only violate multiple federal laws regarding intellectual property rights, including the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, but they likely also provide a valid cause of action for a civil suit for damages.

At least Obama has known better than to have himself photographed holding a gun or wearing a blaze orange vest - campaign stunts that did not help John Kerry gain any credibility with gun owners in 2004.  But he doesn’t look terribly comfortable in that cowboy hat.

Updated to add a link to an annoted report substantiating the above.

Barack Obama’s Muslim Childhood

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 29, 2008
As Barack Obama’s candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate’s integrity.

Obama asserted in December, “I’ve always been a Christian,“ and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. “The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.“ In February, he claimed: “I have never been a Muslim. … other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion.“

“Always” and “never” leave little room for equivocation. But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.
Obama’s Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named “Hussein”.
Obama’s Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.“ An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that “All the relatives of Barry’s father were very devout Muslims.“
Barack Obama’s Catholic school in Jakarta.
The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that “documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim” while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was “listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school.“ A blogger who goes by “An American Expat in Southeast Asia” found that “Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro’ serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry’s religion was listed as Islam.“

Public School- “Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim.“ Although Siddiqui cautions that “With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people’s shifting memories,“ he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama’s being registered as a Muslim.
Barack Obama’s public school in Jakarta.
Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama “recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent.“

Mosque attendance: Obama’s half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque “for big communal events.“ Watson learned from childhood friends that “Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque.“ Barker found that “Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers.“ One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama “was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong” (a garment associated with Muslims).
Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he “didn’t practice [Islam],“ implicitly acknowledging a Muslim identity. Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as “previously quite religious in Islam.“
 
  All this matters, for if Obama once was a Muslim, he is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed. Were he elected president of the United States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world.

  In sum: Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he “for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father.“

Obama’s having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.

Yeah that black hat really makes his blue lips stand out.

Gun rights might be right next to God, mother, and applie pie to a Libertarian, praise Heston, may he rest in peace. 

Not to a Beltway politician though.

My guess is one reason why hardcore politicians like Guiliani have waffled on the issue is that they care about the issue but it isn’t at the very top of their list. They do presumably have standards. Gun control is just not the most important issue.

I could be wrong.

Certainly, Obama is liberal, so I would suspect, no matter what he says, his heart is closer to urban issues like getting guns off the streets than with the right to bear firearms without undue government interference.

He might be more than willing to cut a deal with the NRA, but only because he has bigger fish to fry.

Once again, that is how politicians view the issue, not how you do. I would not be the least surprised Jim Webb “purposely” allowed himself (aide) to be caught carrying a firearm into a government building, expressly to send out the message to the public loud and clear he likes guns, can’t get enough of ‘em. Guns are good.

The political answer best summed up by Sarah Palin, “I may not answer the question the way you or the moderator want me to answer, but I’m going to talk to the American people…“. The message [from Obama and company] is not about policy at all but a shout out pander to you guys and the NRA lobby.

Bill, thanks for that article—and the ones to which it linked.
Just one more reason to vote Libertarian, in site of Bob Barr’s faults.  I’ll certainly not vote for anyone who wants to put me in jail, nor for anyone who wants to take my weapons.

So what! It is evident that NObama can do or say whatever he wants without any accountability to the voters. The golden halo of messiah protects him from honesty or being forthright. Lie to the voters, promise a house in every pot, generate class warfare, raise taxes, plan for the big social programs and associate with those who hate America. Is there anything that NObama could do that would burst his messiah bubble?

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