I need help, re: guns and gun control.

[Atypical Liberal]

15. Aikoaiko and Krispos have pretty much covered all the bases.

I am also a member of the NRA. The NRA is mostly using fear to drum up membership. Obama has not done one single thing to limit the right to keep and bear arms during his presidency, and in fact the has passed laws allowing the carrying of concealed weapons inside national parks.

That said, he did campaign on re-instating the assault weapons ban. It is still up here:

http://change.gov/agenda/urbanpolicy_agenda/

Also, the Democratic Party Platform still lists re-instating the assault weapons ban as a priority.

My opinion is that the President still adheres to an anti-gun philosophy but has not acted on it because it is political suicide to do so. My fear is that when he is elected a second term he will have nothing to lose and will then move on gun control. (Note that I voted for him in 2008 but he lost my support after signing the NDAA.)

It is also true that just a couple of months into his presidency his appointed Attorney General, Eric Holder, publicly proposed re-instating the assault weapons ban. This was roundly shouted down even by Speaker of the House Pelosi, and the idea went away.

Now recently we have uncovered the Fast and Furious (and other) operations whereby the US Government, under Eric Holder's Justice Department, have been caught allowing firearms to be sold through civilian channels to drug cartels in Mexico. Ostensibly this was done to track them to the cartels, except they never notified Mexico, never notified Mexican ATF offices, and stopped tracking the weapons once they crossed the border. The cynical folks suspect that this was done to use foreign gun running to drum up support for gun control, since here at home all rifles, let alone assault rifles, are hardly ever used in crime. More people are killed with hands and feet.