Comment by HoHoHoNowIHaveA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by HoHoHoNowIHaveA | Hacker News Reader

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HoHoHoNowIHaveA

No evidence supports that. None.

Including his public statements on the matter advocating private gun ownership. Certainly not his background as a Constitutional Law Professor.

Obama is, was and remains one of the most authoritative serving politicians on the Constitution and he has not indicated anywhere in his career that he intends to remove legal firearm ownership.

UC Law School statement: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track.[1]

[1]http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-...

Note: My guess is that he, like most sane adults, question the need for possession of a or multiple military-grade rifles or sub-machines capable of killing considerable numbers of human beings in a short space of time.

It's not about taking away the 2nd Amendment. It's about Amending it to make it compatible with modern life whilst maintaining the spirit of the law.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/what-...

As recently as a couple of months ago on Marc Maron's podcast he advocated for Australian style gun control laws which included mandatory registration and confiscation as well as the banning of semi-automatic rifles.

Maybe that doesn't seem like "he wants to take your guns" to you, but it certainly does to many people.

Obviously, like most things, there's a spectrum and this falls somewhere between "he wants to take all your guns" and "free guns for everyone!" But to claim that there is zero evidence that he'd come and take (at least some of) people's guns if he had the political capital to do so is being just as disingenuous as the right-wingers.

Also, as a sibling post has indicated "military grade rifles" "submachine guns" and all sorts of other scary sounding things are regulated to hell and back and nearly impossible to obtain for your average citizen. They're also used in crime approximately none of the time. People who would like stronger regulation routinely and intentionally conflate real military (automatic or select fire) rifles with the semi-automatic civilian lookalikes.

The more that you know about guns, the stupider the proposals sound. Take the expired Assault Weapons Ban that people keep trying to bring back. Almost all gun murders are carried out with handguns and there's no evidence that the ban, while active, had any positive effects. "Assault weapons" sure sound scary though. The same goes for bans on high capacity magazines and high caliber guns, mandates for gun locks and safes, etc. This stuff is 100% political pandering and demagoguery, not serious policy making.

As for Obama the constitutional law professor, I think actions speak louder than words. When he can't get what he wants from Congress, he's had no problem twisting the meaning of existing law to legislate from the White House.

Assault weapons hold a symbolic value and are key terrain in the moral battlefield.

The weapon itself represents the worst attitudes of the pro-gun lobby and form the crux of the argument about reasonable firearm protection.

Please keep your symbolism away from my rights.

Not sure what you mean by "military-grade" rifles, but sub-machine guns and automatic rifles are basically unobtanium to ordinary citizens. They are heavily regulated and restricted to pre-1986 firearms, making them astronomically expensive.

A weapon which has it's primary application in the rapid suppression and/or killing of human beings not game or target shooting.

A weapon suited to military maneuvers of a fire team, platoon or larger formation attack.[1]

A weapon which falls outside the boundaries of reasonable use for home protection and includes modified components or additional lethality, magazine capacity or militarised amendments.[2]

[1] Military personnel are highly unlikely to conduct offensive action utilising sidearms. Sidearms are considered a defensive weapon system.

In addition, ammunition greater than the calibre 5.56mm is designed to kill human beings whilst 5.56 mm ammunition and below is designed to injure and maim but ultimately limit loss of life. Injury of military opponents on the battlefield is a greater asset than destruction.

[2] Home deterrence is as equally likely to be achieved whilst brandishing a single shot hunting rifle, sidearm or shotgun.

During the time Obama was a lecturer the conventional wisdom on the limits of the second amendment weren't so clear cut. Many believe there was no individual right to bear arms. Certainly many professors believed that too. Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the most respected constitutional scholars thought DC's handgun ban was constitutional before Heller.

I bet President Obama's conlaw course didn't even cover the second amendment. Mine didn't and I went to school after Heller and Mcdonald.

In fact, when SCOTUS finally acknowledged the individual right in 2008, four justices didn't agree with the decision. If Scalia or Thomas dropped dead, you'd see a whole new line of cases tightening gun rights.

>Note: My guess is that he, like most sane adults, question the need for possession of a or multiple military-grade rifles or sub-machines capable of killing considerable numbers of human beings in a short space of time.

Our problem is pretty much the opposite of this. It's the handguns that are the scourge of America.

If you want to solve gun violence in America you would have ban (and successfully confiscate) all hanguns and semi-auto rifles and shutguns. Cheap handguns are the source of essentially all gun crime if you round to the nearest 10%.

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