With Biden, Obama Doubles Down On Gun Control
by John Velleco
Director of Federal Affairs

Should Barak Obama win in the November election, he could rival Bill Clinton as the most anti-gun president in U.S. history.

Sen. Obama claims on the campaign trail that he believes the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but he thought the Washington, D.C. gun ban was constitutional. He supports banning semi-automatic firearms, and in the Illinois state senate, Obama voted to limit handgun purchases to one-a-month and opposed a bill to prevent frivolous lawsuits against the firearms industry.

While his overall résumé may be thin, Barak Obama’s stance on the Second Amendment is clear. Not surprisingly, Democrats are hopeful that Sen. Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, will bring to the ticket experience and blue collar appeal that Obama lacks.

“He’s an expert on foreign policy whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the middle class,” Obama said at a rally in Springfield, Ill., introducing his newly selected vice-presidential candidate. Why, he was even born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. How much more middle American can you get?

Obama and other party leaders, however, will discover just how out of touch “Average Joe” Biden is with most Americans when it comes to the Second Amendment. In fact, without Sen. Biden (who holds a putrid “F-” rating from Gun Owners of America) former president Clinton would not have been nearly as effective passing an extremist gun control agenda.

As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 1990s, Biden oversaw some of the most massive expansions of gun control in the history of the United States. Biden was an early and chief proponent of the Brady bill, which required a five day waiting period before the purchase of a handgun. The Brady bill probably would not have passed without Biden strong-arming Republicans and getting the bill through the Senate 1993.

Another of Biden’s chief claims to fame, as noted on his own senate website, is authoring the 1994 Crime Bill with its so-called assault weapons ban, a gun prohibition that actually banned over 180 types of common semi-automatic firearms. President Clinton noted in a 1994 speech that without Biden, “there would have been no crime bill this year.”

Not lost on the former president, though, was the fact that the Brady Act and the Crime bill contributed to his party losing control of Congress. Clinton told editors of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer newspaper that gun control votes cost his party 20 seats in Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections.

When the semi-auto ban “sunset” in 2004, Sen. Biden did not celebrate with the majority of “middle America.” Instead, he continues his fight against the Second Amendment, and is currently the author of a bill to renew the unpopular gun ban.

The anti-gun Democrats who control the leadership positions in the House (Nancy Pelosi) and Senate (Harry Reid) are hoping that the Obama/Biden team will be there to sign their anti-gun legislation into law after the November elections — leaving law-abiding American gun owners hung out to dry and the Constitution destroyed.

Obama may be giddy with the thought that he has selected someone to reach out to hard-working middle class Americans. But he has made a serious miscalculation about Biden’s blue collar, moderate bona fides. He’s going to learn that most Americans love liberty, cherish freedom, and, to borrow a phrase, “cling” to their Second Amendment rights. On that score, Biden is no “Average Joe.”