Kurt Nicklas
2008-06-30 21:38:15 UTC
Gun Ruling Lets Obama Off the Hook
By Robert Novak
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/scalia_saves_obama.html
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After months of claiming insufficient information
to express an opinion on the District of Columbia gun law, Barack
Obama noted with apparent approval Thursday that the Supreme Court
ruled the 32-year ban on handguns "went too far." But what would he
have said had the high court's five-to-four majority gone the other
way and affirmed the law? Obama's strategists can only thank swing
Justice Anthony Kennedy for enabling Justice Antonin Scalia's majority
opinion to take the Democratic presidential candidate off the hook.
Such relief is typified by a vigorous supporter of Obama who advised
Al Gore in his 2000 presidential campaign. Believing Gore's gun-
control advocacy lost him West Virginia and the presidency, this
prominent Democrat told me: "I don't want that to happen with Obama --
to be defeated on an issue that is not important to us and is not a
political winner for us." He would not be quoted by name because he
did not want abuse heaped on him by gun-control activists.
This political reality explains the minuet on the D.C. gun issue
danced all year by Obama. Liberal Democrats who publicly deride the
National Rifle Association privately fear the NRA as the most potent
of conservative interest group. Many white men with NRA decals on
their vehicles are labor union members whose votes Obama needs in West
Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. That is why Obama did not
share the outrage of his supporter Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty over
the Supreme Court's decision.
What may be Obama's authentic position on gun rights was revealed in
early April when he told a closed-door Silicon Valley fundraiser that
"bitter" small-town residents "cling" to the Bible and Second
Amendment. That ran against his public assertion as a former
constitutional law professor that the Constitution guarantees rights
for individual gun owners, not just group rights for state militias.
But his legal opinion forced Obama into a political corner.
The case before the Supreme Court pleading for the D.C. gun ban was
based entirely on the argument that the Constitution's rights applied
only to state militias. During oral arguments March 18, Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg asked whether the Second Amendment has "any effect
today as a restraint on legislation," since such militias no longer
exist. Walter Dellinger, a former solicitor general representing the
District of Columbia, replied that "it doesn't," adding, "You don't
make up a new use for an amendment whose prohibitions aren't being
violated."
Obama's dilemma was that his reading of a Second Amendment that "means
something" made it difficult for him to say the D.C. law was
constitutional. His public pronouncements were so imprecise that The
Associated Press misreported him at a February press conference in
Milwaukee saying he "voiced support" for the ban.
In March and April, I tried unsuccessfully for weeks to get a simple
"yes" or "no" from Obama on constitutionality. When the question for
the first time was put to him directly at ABC's Philadelphia
presidential debate on April 16, he answered, "I confess I obviously
haven't listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence." On
National Public Radio April 21 the day before the Pennsylvania
primary, Obama said, "I don't know all the details and specifics of
the D.C. gun law." He had not been asked and had not volunteered his
opinion prior to Thursday's decision.
The issue will return when Chicago's handgun ban, modeled after the
Washington law, is challenged in the courts. As a Chicago lawyer,
Obama can hardly plead ignorance as he did concerning the D.C. gun
ban. But with the case wending its way back to the Supreme Court for
the next year, Obama will not have to answer the question before the
November election.
While Scalia's opinion for now saves Obama from defending a court that
had emasculated gun rights, one inconvenient truth confronts the
candidate. He has made clear that as president he would nominate
Supreme Court justices who agree with the minority of four that the
Second Amendment is meaningless. Would he want a reconstituted court
to roll back the District of Columbia decision when the Chicago case
gets there?
By Robert Novak
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/scalia_saves_obama.html
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After months of claiming insufficient information
to express an opinion on the District of Columbia gun law, Barack
Obama noted with apparent approval Thursday that the Supreme Court
ruled the 32-year ban on handguns "went too far." But what would he
have said had the high court's five-to-four majority gone the other
way and affirmed the law? Obama's strategists can only thank swing
Justice Anthony Kennedy for enabling Justice Antonin Scalia's majority
opinion to take the Democratic presidential candidate off the hook.
Such relief is typified by a vigorous supporter of Obama who advised
Al Gore in his 2000 presidential campaign. Believing Gore's gun-
control advocacy lost him West Virginia and the presidency, this
prominent Democrat told me: "I don't want that to happen with Obama --
to be defeated on an issue that is not important to us and is not a
political winner for us." He would not be quoted by name because he
did not want abuse heaped on him by gun-control activists.
This political reality explains the minuet on the D.C. gun issue
danced all year by Obama. Liberal Democrats who publicly deride the
National Rifle Association privately fear the NRA as the most potent
of conservative interest group. Many white men with NRA decals on
their vehicles are labor union members whose votes Obama needs in West
Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. That is why Obama did not
share the outrage of his supporter Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty over
the Supreme Court's decision.
What may be Obama's authentic position on gun rights was revealed in
early April when he told a closed-door Silicon Valley fundraiser that
"bitter" small-town residents "cling" to the Bible and Second
Amendment. That ran against his public assertion as a former
constitutional law professor that the Constitution guarantees rights
for individual gun owners, not just group rights for state militias.
But his legal opinion forced Obama into a political corner.
The case before the Supreme Court pleading for the D.C. gun ban was
based entirely on the argument that the Constitution's rights applied
only to state militias. During oral arguments March 18, Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg asked whether the Second Amendment has "any effect
today as a restraint on legislation," since such militias no longer
exist. Walter Dellinger, a former solicitor general representing the
District of Columbia, replied that "it doesn't," adding, "You don't
make up a new use for an amendment whose prohibitions aren't being
violated."
Obama's dilemma was that his reading of a Second Amendment that "means
something" made it difficult for him to say the D.C. law was
constitutional. His public pronouncements were so imprecise that The
Associated Press misreported him at a February press conference in
Milwaukee saying he "voiced support" for the ban.
In March and April, I tried unsuccessfully for weeks to get a simple
"yes" or "no" from Obama on constitutionality. When the question for
the first time was put to him directly at ABC's Philadelphia
presidential debate on April 16, he answered, "I confess I obviously
haven't listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence." On
National Public Radio April 21 the day before the Pennsylvania
primary, Obama said, "I don't know all the details and specifics of
the D.C. gun law." He had not been asked and had not volunteered his
opinion prior to Thursday's decision.
The issue will return when Chicago's handgun ban, modeled after the
Washington law, is challenged in the courts. As a Chicago lawyer,
Obama can hardly plead ignorance as he did concerning the D.C. gun
ban. But with the case wending its way back to the Supreme Court for
the next year, Obama will not have to answer the question before the
November election.
While Scalia's opinion for now saves Obama from defending a court that
had emasculated gun rights, one inconvenient truth confronts the
candidate. He has made clear that as president he would nominate
Supreme Court justices who agree with the minority of four that the
Second Amendment is meaningless. Would he want a reconstituted court
to roll back the District of Columbia decision when the Chicago case
gets there?