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"Gun grabbers" is not a fair term to use for someone like Obama (at least as far as the campaign he ran on), but it is a very appropriate term for someone who has actually endorse confiscating most commonly owned firearms if not all private firearms.

You're conflating "this will never happen" with "there aren't people who want this to happen".

Calling every single ATF employee a "jack booted Nazi thug" is indeed unfair, wrong, and incendiary. Calling someone who wants to confiscate guns "a gun grabber" is not.

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You utterly fail when you get to the point of "at least as far as the campaign he ran on". I mean, even ignoring everything else, he's a politician.

And he had quite an anti-gun record before the campaign; e.g. being a Joyce Foundation board member is about as hard core as you can get. From what I learned, hard stuff vs. what is claimed he said while at the University of Chicago Law School, I believe he would actually like to confiscate all civilian firearms.

But he's not like Clinton, he's not a cultural Baby Boomer, he's actually from Generation Jones like myself. So the culture wars that have consumed the US since the '60s aren't, I believe, a big driver for him, just something he'll use.

However, bottom line, if he wants to ban commonly used guns, which "assault weapons" most certainly are, e.g. per Dianne Feinstein prevent transfer so they must be surrendered upon death (and she's quite clear about desiring total confiscations), I can't see how "gun grabber" is seriously incorrect.

How many politicians want to outlaw all abortions unilaterally, whether openly or secretly? A plan to round up all the guns is even less likely. Intents do matter, but let's keep some perspective.

Also, I've been hearing about Obama's secret desire to confiscate guns for years. Do you have anything stronger than third-hand hearsay to back this up? (Honest question, no snark intended.)

The Joyce Foundation's support of gun control, greater than any other single source (although Bloomberg may exceed them sooner or later) and Obama's board seat on it are matters of public record. I don't have to go any further than that.

You don't have to, but I'd appreciate it if you did. Being affiliated with a group doesn't mean you are in lock-step with that group or its members on every issue. People are capable of changing or expanding their views as they age. And finally, a cursory glance at the Joyce Foundation describes policies of gun regulation, not a tacit elimination of the 2nd Amendment.

Sorry, I just don't have the time now, and it's old news, since now we have his actions as a President to judge. From memory, there's that questioner he filled out while running for state? office, John Lott said while they were both at the U. of Chicago Law school that he absolutely refused to debate the issue and said he didn't think civilians should have guns, and I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting.

But you really should look into the Joyce Foundation some more, they massively funded an effort to provide a legal foundation for the "collective right" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment; as I note here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070792 that investment was a total loss, 9 out of 9 Supremes said individual right.

And while one might not be "in lock-step with that group or its members on every issue" it makes a statement when you take the highest position after Chairman of the Board in the nation's premier anti-gun funding foundation. And as a board member you're responsible for the oversight of donations, the foundation's spending strategy, it's hard to see how he could have been in that position without agreeing with e.g. it's position of nullifying the 2nd Amendment.

Would you be as sanguine if he'd been a board member of the Pioneer Fund (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund)? I met its future head Philippe Rushton when he first presented his work at a late 80's AAAS annual meeting, he appeared to be an honest albeit naive scientist, he didn't expect the firestorm that his research resulted in (roughly quoting: "for every criteria I can find, blacks and Orientals plot at the extremes with whites in the middle"). (I myself have no informed opinion on these topics, ask me about chemistry, guns, computers, etc., but not that.)

Thanks for the reply. The Heller case does seems pertinent, though I'm unable to find concrete information on JF funding the Heller case beyond the conservative blogosphere.

> now we have his actions as a President to judge

Again, so far these actions are nothing more than mainstream liberal boilerplate about background checks, "assault rifles", "cop-killer bullets", etc. While this could be the first salvo in an attempt to undo the 2nd Amendment entirely, it doesn't meet my burden of proof. It feels up there with Naomi Wolf's "You just wait, Cheney's gonna declare martial law any day now!" in 2007.

Errr, perhaps you missed his call yesterday to ban "assault weapons" and "high" (really, standard) capacity magazines? You may consider these to be "mainstream liberal boilerplate"; where I come from, they're "fighting words", and we'll see if we can send any Democrats and Republicans who support him back home to spend more time with their families in 2015.

There are also serious implications to his claim of executive privilege in the DoJ's denying the Congress documents on Fast and Furious. Either that operation reached into his staff, or the claim is bogus.

Your statement that starts with "While this could be the first salvo in an attempt to undo the 2nd Amendment entirely..." is irrelevant about my defense of my assertion that he's a "gun grabber".

Although one should note how every time something does get passed, it's described by "gun grabbers" as a good first step.....

ADDED: The massive funding wasn't of the Heller case per se. It was of legal "research" to support a future case like it, they weren't willing to bet the Supremes would keep dodging the issue like they have since the manufactured Miller case in 1939.

Yes, assault weapons and magazines are what I was referring to. I understand the objections, and I sympathize; I don't really have a horse in this race either way (I'm keenly aware that if so inclined, The State will happily squash me like a bug, whether or not I own a fully auto AK-47 that fires armor-piercing bullets).

My point is that there is clearly a policy distinction between what liberals are calling "common sense protections", and legislation to _proactively take every gun from every gun owner_. There is a spectrum of opinion wider than [x] gun-grabber [ ] non-gun-grabber, and I don't believe any opinions should be dismissed a priori. There are real arguments to be made in favor of gun regulation, even if those arguments are wrong; holding such opinions does not necessarily mean one is secretly in favor of repealing all gun rights.

> How many politicians want to outlaw all abortions unilaterally, whether openly or secretly?

Many politicians are openly on the record as wanting to outlaw all abortion, even when there's a danger to mother's health, and even in the case of rape or incest. However, they've missed a minor detail: 54% of Americans are female and they just lost an election over it.

Unfortunately, while I'm happy that they're starting to realize that "this shit won't fly" so to speak, I'm scared that this position has become tenable: when I first took an interest in politics (~1998) "pro-life" position was explicitly defined as "opposition to abortion _other than_ when the mother's health is at risk, or in the case of incest or rape". That simply was not up for debate (the big debates were about parental notification, third trimester abortion, etc...).

Quite frankly passage of the "Partial Birth Abortion" (which defined this in explicitly moralizing terms and likened a different procedure to infanticide, as well as excluded provisions for mother's health, rape/incest, et al) is what I personally think made this tenable. When the distinction between "abortion" and "ALMOST infanticide" has been made using a non-scientific criteria, the gates to encroachment have been opened.

Likewise, the difference between "a military weapon that doesn't belong in our home" and a "grandpa's hunting rifle" is purely cosmetic, you can start arguing that "grandpa's hunting rifle" doesn't belong in your home, either.

I think we're mostly in agreement: my argument is that today Obama eposes the "I support the right to bear arms, but not assault weapons" and "I won't take away your gun" position.

What is fairly clear is that organizations that came up with the term "assault weapon" and are pushing for them to be banned are explicitly and openly in favor of confiscation. of far more than "assault weapons".

And Obama has not changed since the 2008 campaign, when he said just that, although of course the devil is in the details. His Congressional allies are reaching for much more than a renewal of the 1994 AW ban. E.g. DiFi from memory: 1, not 2 features, NFA registration, no transfers and your guns must be disposed of when you die, and I'm pretty sure no importation of > 10 round magazines. And of course she's on record in the CBS 60 Minutes interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5H8vqZxVHs , http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7380236n

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here."

Good point. I guess it is OK to call a Nazi a Nazi, even if actual Nazis are extremely rare. I just don't see many Nazis or gun grabbers in mainstream American politics. Obama? Biden? Giffords? Not gun grabbers.

Wow, just realized I've inadvertently Godwin'd this thread (when citing someone else, nonetheless, but still...)

The problem is that platform being advanced by Obama and Biden has been authored well ahead of time by gun control organizations. Before you call me a conspiracy theorist, I'll state that this is not a conspiracy if they're out working in the open about it; nor is it wrong for a President to call interest groups for policy advice. The real problem is that these interest groups are actively advancing an agenda that goes far beyond "Assault Weapons" or what most Americans would be comfortable with.

These organizations don't say "we will go out and confiscate most guns", they say "let's ban dangerous weapons and have mandatory buybacks", but then "British National Party" doesn't call themselves "National Socialist British Worker's Party" (ditto for "Golden Dawn" in Greece, etc..)

tl;dr It's right to call this a gun-grabbing agenda, even if the Obama had campaigned on the premise of "I won't take your guns" and said that he thinks that "second amendment recognizes an individual right".

Obama had better say the latter after 9 out of 9 Supreme Court justices said it in Heller.

That was one massive investment by the Joyce Foundation that went spectacularly bad....

On a side note, I am pleasantly surprised, that most people on this site see the "legislating higher aesthetic critique of semi automatic firearms and hermeneutical analysis on the meaning of ``flash hider''" bills for what they are.

Reactions to bringing up any opposition to this most elsewhere was a fusillade of vitriol.

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