The Discerning Texan

To gun owners, despite what their stance may or may not be regarding John McCain, this should be a clarion call to arms, to use an unfortunate--but accurate--pun:

Barack Obama is embracing anti-gun policies in the run-up to a Democratic presidential debate scheduled on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings.

“I am not in favor of concealed weapons,” Obama told the Pittsburgh Tribune. “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.”

These remarks break from Obama’s previous moderate rhetoric on gun control.

While campaigning in Idaho in February, Obama promised, “I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.”

Obama elaborated later that month in a political forum sponsored by ABC News and the Politico. He said: “I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respects the Second Amendment and people's traditions."

Obama’s tough talk on gun control may be prompted by Philadelphia-based Democratic leaders who are pressuring Clinton and Obama to adopt harder stances on gun control. This issue is expected to come up in ABC News’ Democratic debate on April 16 in Philadelphia. 32 people were shot to death on the campus of Virginia Tech by Seung-Hui Cho April 16, 2007.

Obama’s new hardline liberal position differs from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and GOP candidate John McCain, who both are for concealed-carry.

Presumably Obama would try to enact some sort of Federal ban against concealed carry, after which a court battle against the new law would be taken up by States (like mine), which permit citizens to defend themselves. It would be a case that the Supreme Court would very likely have to decide.

This suggests a very sobering bottom line: a Democrat President, if he also has a Democrat Congress, could possibly get such legislation enacted, although the current Supreme Court might overturn it on a Federalist angle and/or as a Second Amendment right.

But if the very prospect of such a law does not underscore for gun owners the criticality of doing all in their power to see that Democrats at all levels are defeated in the fall, then we are in very great danger, indeed. For a Barack Obama might not only enact such a law, he could also presumably add judges who would not be so loyal to the Constitution.