Post by savage on May 20, 2008 16:41:37 GMT -5
Courting N.R.A., McCain Criticizes Obama and Clinton on Gun Control
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 17, 2008
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Senator John McCain reached out to the National Rifle Association on Friday and warned 6,000 people at the group’s annual convention that a President Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton would put the rights of “law-abiding” gun owners at risk.
“It seems every election, politicians who support restrictions on the Second Amendment dress up in camouflage and pose with guns to demonstrate they care about hunters,” Mr. McCain said, “even though few gun owners fall for such obvious political theater.”
After Mr. Obama said last month that small-town voters “cling” to guns and religion because they are “bitter” over their economic circumstances, Mr. McCain recounted, Mrs. Clinton quickly affirmed her support for the Second Amendment right to bear arms. This, Mr. McCain said, drew the derisive comment from Mr. Obama that Mrs. Clinton was acting “like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, packing a six-shooter.”
Mr. McCain paused, then said to laughter, “Someone should tell Senator Obama that ducks are usually hunted with shotguns.”
Mr. McCain, who was received with warm but not wild applause, has not always been a favorite of the country’s largest gun lobby, and was once branded by it as “one of the premier flag-carriers for enemies of the Second Amendment.” The gun lobby still disagrees with Mr. McCain because he favors background checks for firearm sales at gun shows and pushed through campaign finance regulations that restricted political advertising by groups like the N.R.A.
But this week the N.R.A.’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, told The Louisville Courier-Journal that there were “vast numbers of areas” in which Mr. McCain and the gun lobby agreed. In 1994, the senator voted against a ban on assault weapons because he considered it, as he told reporters on Friday, an “encroachment” on the Second Amendment. Last year Mr. McCain told The Associated Press, “I strongly support the Second Amendment and I believe the Second Amendment ought to be preserved — which means no gun control.”
And this year, Mr. McCain was one of 55 senators to sign a brief urging the Supreme Court to declare the District of Columbia’s strict gun-control law “unconstitutional per se.” The brief, a major new cause for the N.R.A., was not signed by Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama.
In his speech, Mr. McCain acknowledged his differences with the N.R.A., but said they should not detract from his “long record of support” for the Second Amendment.
“For more than two decades, I’ve opposed efforts to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines and dismiss gun owners as some kind of fringe group unwelcome in modern America,” Mr. McCain told the group. “The Second Amendment isn’t some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans, who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances. The Second Amendment is unique in the world. It guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our founding fathers.”
He added: “The clear meaning of the Second Amendment has not stopped those who want to punish firearms owners, and those who make and sell firearms, for the actions of criminals. It seems like every time there is a particularly violent crime, the antigun activists demand yet another restriction on the Second Amendment.”
At a town-hall-style meeting in Watertown, S.D., on Friday, Mr. Obama responded that he supported the Second Amendment, but that he believed in “common-sense gun laws so that we don’t have kids being shot on the streets of cities like Chicago.”
The N.R.A.’s position, he added, is that “any law related to gun ownership is a potential camel’s nose under the tent, and that if we allow even, you know, the smallest concession, that somehow guns are going to be taken away from everybody.”
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton support limits on gun sales and extending the ban on assault weapons.
Mr. McCain was preceded in the cavernous Kentucky Exposition Center on Friday by a long list of Republican speakers, including the former Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney; Karl Rove, the former top political aide in the Bush White House and now a commentator for Fox News; John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations; and Oliver L. North, the Reagan-era official who secretly sold weapons to Iran to support the anti-Marxist rebels of Nicaragua.
Earlier on Friday, before Mr. McCain’s appearance at the N.R.A. convention, Mr. McCain and a clutch of camera crews dropped in on the St. Albans Gun & Archery shop near Charleston, W.Va. But Mr. McCain avoided the guns. Instead, he and his wife, Cindy, looked for a scale to weigh catfish — the shop did not have one — and bought a $40 fishing rod, plus bobbers, hooks, sinkers and bait.
It was unclear why Mr. McCain drew a line at walking down the aisle of rifles at the shop, although such a stroll would have generated endless loops on cable news. On his campaign bus Friday morning, Mr. McCain told reporters that he did not own a gun, although he carried a pistol as a Navy pilot.
After the stop at the gun shop, Mr. McCain’s traveling press secretary, Brooke Buchanan, said that Mr. McCain would use his new fishing rod on the artificial lake at his 10-acre Arizona spread in Sedona.
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 17, 2008
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Senator John McCain reached out to the National Rifle Association on Friday and warned 6,000 people at the group’s annual convention that a President Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton would put the rights of “law-abiding” gun owners at risk.
“It seems every election, politicians who support restrictions on the Second Amendment dress up in camouflage and pose with guns to demonstrate they care about hunters,” Mr. McCain said, “even though few gun owners fall for such obvious political theater.”
After Mr. Obama said last month that small-town voters “cling” to guns and religion because they are “bitter” over their economic circumstances, Mr. McCain recounted, Mrs. Clinton quickly affirmed her support for the Second Amendment right to bear arms. This, Mr. McCain said, drew the derisive comment from Mr. Obama that Mrs. Clinton was acting “like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, packing a six-shooter.”
Mr. McCain paused, then said to laughter, “Someone should tell Senator Obama that ducks are usually hunted with shotguns.”
Mr. McCain, who was received with warm but not wild applause, has not always been a favorite of the country’s largest gun lobby, and was once branded by it as “one of the premier flag-carriers for enemies of the Second Amendment.” The gun lobby still disagrees with Mr. McCain because he favors background checks for firearm sales at gun shows and pushed through campaign finance regulations that restricted political advertising by groups like the N.R.A.
But this week the N.R.A.’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, told The Louisville Courier-Journal that there were “vast numbers of areas” in which Mr. McCain and the gun lobby agreed. In 1994, the senator voted against a ban on assault weapons because he considered it, as he told reporters on Friday, an “encroachment” on the Second Amendment. Last year Mr. McCain told The Associated Press, “I strongly support the Second Amendment and I believe the Second Amendment ought to be preserved — which means no gun control.”
And this year, Mr. McCain was one of 55 senators to sign a brief urging the Supreme Court to declare the District of Columbia’s strict gun-control law “unconstitutional per se.” The brief, a major new cause for the N.R.A., was not signed by Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama.
In his speech, Mr. McCain acknowledged his differences with the N.R.A., but said they should not detract from his “long record of support” for the Second Amendment.
“For more than two decades, I’ve opposed efforts to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines and dismiss gun owners as some kind of fringe group unwelcome in modern America,” Mr. McCain told the group. “The Second Amendment isn’t some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans, who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances. The Second Amendment is unique in the world. It guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our founding fathers.”
He added: “The clear meaning of the Second Amendment has not stopped those who want to punish firearms owners, and those who make and sell firearms, for the actions of criminals. It seems like every time there is a particularly violent crime, the antigun activists demand yet another restriction on the Second Amendment.”
At a town-hall-style meeting in Watertown, S.D., on Friday, Mr. Obama responded that he supported the Second Amendment, but that he believed in “common-sense gun laws so that we don’t have kids being shot on the streets of cities like Chicago.”
The N.R.A.’s position, he added, is that “any law related to gun ownership is a potential camel’s nose under the tent, and that if we allow even, you know, the smallest concession, that somehow guns are going to be taken away from everybody.”
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton support limits on gun sales and extending the ban on assault weapons.
Mr. McCain was preceded in the cavernous Kentucky Exposition Center on Friday by a long list of Republican speakers, including the former Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney; Karl Rove, the former top political aide in the Bush White House and now a commentator for Fox News; John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations; and Oliver L. North, the Reagan-era official who secretly sold weapons to Iran to support the anti-Marxist rebels of Nicaragua.
Earlier on Friday, before Mr. McCain’s appearance at the N.R.A. convention, Mr. McCain and a clutch of camera crews dropped in on the St. Albans Gun & Archery shop near Charleston, W.Va. But Mr. McCain avoided the guns. Instead, he and his wife, Cindy, looked for a scale to weigh catfish — the shop did not have one — and bought a $40 fishing rod, plus bobbers, hooks, sinkers and bait.
It was unclear why Mr. McCain drew a line at walking down the aisle of rifles at the shop, although such a stroll would have generated endless loops on cable news. On his campaign bus Friday morning, Mr. McCain told reporters that he did not own a gun, although he carried a pistol as a Navy pilot.
After the stop at the gun shop, Mr. McCain’s traveling press secretary, Brooke Buchanan, said that Mr. McCain would use his new fishing rod on the artificial lake at his 10-acre Arizona spread in Sedona.