Pat Dollard | Young Americans

(IBD)

Gun Rights: Obama claims he believes the Second Amendment says you can own a gun but that local communities can still opt out of the Constitution. What will he say as his political hometown is sued by the NRA?

While campaigning in Pennsylvania earlier this year, Barack Obama was having breakfast with his Democratic Senate colleague Bob Casey. A reporter asked Obama about Jimmy Carter’s trip to see the terrorist group Hamas. Obama responded: “Why is it that, like, I can’t just eat my waffle?”

There’s going to be another waffle Obama’s going to eat as he tries to explain his simultaneous support for the District of Columbia gun ban he called constitutional and the Supreme Court decision in the Heller case that said it wasn’t. Obama has developed an almost Clintonesque ability to take both sides of an issue.

That ability will be put to the test as gun-rights groups sue to overturn similar gun bans in Chicago and nearby suburbs. Hours after the high court’s 5-4 ruling was made public Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association sued Chicago and its mayor in an effort to overturn the city’s 26-year-old ban on handguns.

The National Rifle Association likewise announced plans to file lawsuits in Chicago and several suburbs, as well as San Francisco, challenging laws similar to D.C.’s unconstitutional ban. Only police officers, aldermen and a handful of others are exempt under Chicago’s ban, which says handguns are illegal within the city and cannot be registered.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, who never goes anywhere without armed security, called Heller “a very frightening decision.” Not as frightening as the fact the murder rate in Chicago has risen 13% this year with the handgun ban in effect.

Former University of Chicago professor John Lott, now at the University of Maryland, says Chicago’s handgun ban didn’t work at all when it came to reducing violence. Chicago’s murder rate fell to 22 per 100,000 from 27 in the five years before the law and then rose slightly to 23. It also rose relative to other large cities and its five neighboring Illinois counties.

Reacting to the Heller decision, Obama said he’d uphold the rights of gun owners, rights denied by the D.C. and Chicago bans, saying: “I know what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We need to work together to enact common sense laws.”

But such bans don’t work anywhere, and Obama once thought the D.C. ban was both common sense and constitutional.

“I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence through common sense, effective safety measures,” Obama said in a statement that makes his position perfectly unclear.

As the magnificent five wrote, “We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country. . . . But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.” Liberal critics of the decision apparently worry about constitutional rights only when it’s terrorists who have tried to kill us and are captured and sent to Gitmo.

John McCain, speaking in Arlington, Va., on Thursday, said: “Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans.”

In a February debate, moderator Leon Harris of Washington TV station WJLA asked Obama: “You said in Idaho recently, I’m quoting here, ‘I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.’ But you support the D.C. gun ban, and you’ve said that it’s constitutional.”

Obama nodded as Harris spoke and said: “Right, right.”

“How can you reconcile those two different positions?” Harris asked. The right answer is that Obama can’t. He mumbled something about conflicting traditions of gun ownership and said: “So there’s nothing wrong, I think, with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets.”

You’re saying much more than that, senator — that you want to take legal handguns out of the homes of law-abiding citizens.

Sen. McCain is a straight-shooter. We’ll wait for Sen. Obama to finish his waffle.