Guns don't kill people, bullets do...

Well, tonight, I was prompted by @winkydo's tweet about all the store's he's visited that are now out of ammo.

I asked if he knew why, and got a response from @txsarge and from @winkydo talking about how Obama plans to ban guns and ammo, and how Clinton did, respectively.

So, before putting my foot in my mouth, I asked for proof, and then did a Google Search for "obama proposed tax on ammo" and the first link was for a Washington Post article: "NRA Ads are off target about Obama and Guns"

While it is true that Obama favors tighter gun laws, it is a huge stretch to argue that he wants to take away the guns and ammunition most commonly used by hunters. The claim that he favors "a huge new tax on guns and ammo" rests on a confusingly worded nine-year-old newspaper article that has little relevance for Obama's platform as a presidential candidate.

Without enumerating the list of all the things the WP cited as being inaccurate about the NRA's Ad, essentially the article is saying the NRA is claiming Obama wants to do away with all handguns - when their research shows that in 1999...

...Obama, then an Illinois state senator, supported a "500 percent" increase in the federal tax on the sale of "weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths."

Personally, I have no problem with that; why not discourage people from buying the guns that are the cause of unnecessary deaths? That doesn't infringe on hunters and their rifles. I then went and found an article by the New York Times: "Clinton proposes ban on armor-piercing ammunition"

"If a bullet can rip through a bulletproof vest like a knife through hot butter, then it ought to be history," Mr. Clinton said in accepting an award from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence at a police station house accompanied by Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley.

Again, I have no problem with that. Why would we want to allow irresponsible people to have the ability (legally) to shoot through armor? Shouldn't the police have the ability to be protected from incursions, and have superior firepower than who they are going up against? (Granted, there is another side of the conversation - the sale of full-body armor to criminals.)

I passed those two links on, and clicked on another link from FOX News, criticizing the Washington Post article for being incomplete, saying:

The Washington Post analysis only discusses two issues: the Kennedy ammunition ban and the 500 percent ammunition tax. On the Kennedy bill, the Post makes the same mistake as FactCheck.org. Regarding the tax, the Post doesn’t deny that Obama held that position, but points out that the legislation Obama supported was in 1999 and that it is not clear what guns would have their ammunition taxed. CNN’s discussion appears unwilling to admit that Obama has supported large-scale bans on gun ownership.

and enumerates all the points it makes from FactCheck.org. It is at this point that it is, once again clear, depending on who your sources are, the perspective of the article will be skewed to the agenda.

Having settled on that, I decided the only place to get valid, legitimate information is from the actual source, and I went to the WhiteHouse.gov site, did a search for "gun ban", which returned one result: an article to Obama's Agenda on Urban Policy. A CTRL + F find for "gun" takes you to this bullet point:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

Again, I have no problem releasing the information on who registered a gun so they can be held responsible for its misuse; and I have no problem banning assault weapons for the greater good of the rest of the people.

Meanwhile, I got 4 responses from @winkydo:

• ABC News: "Obama to seek new assault weapons ban"
• The Volokh Conspiracy Weblog: "FactCheck flubs Obama gun fact check"
• The Sean Hannity Forums: a post from alias die hard republican "Obama supports a 500% tax increase on firearms and ammo"
• The Connecticut Tristates News Channel website: "IL gun insurance proposal"

Now, having gone through the stuff I've just read, and deciding to focus on actual fact listing or as close to 1st-person sources as possible, it's hard to lend any kind of credibility to anyone in the media but the source these days. Every news channel has a political leaning, and every reporter has a personal leaning. My preference is a bullet list of the actions as they happened from ontheissues.org. So I went and got a list of Obama's stance on Gun Control. I did the same thing before the election to see what McCain's real stance was on issues as compared to Obama's.

It's been my view that the major difference between the two parties, Republican and Democratic, is boiled down to two perspectives:

• Republican: personal rights, guided by conservative morals imposed on others.
  
• Democratic: civil rights, guided by the populous imposed on everyone.

Over the years, my opinions have shifted, and I can see how I believed things in the past that were not held because they were for the good of other people, but because it was what I thought was best for everyone else - with utter apathy for anyone experiencing adverse affects from such beliefs.

That's not to say I don't still have apathy for a lot of things, but it is to say that I can now see it from the other perspective. Maybe I'll write more on what my perspective is and why it's changed, and hit the main talking points that both political parties touch on.

That's all for now.