WSJ: Obama Won't Ban Guns, 'I Don't Have the Votes in Congress'

At the OnTap blog, Cam Edwards passes along a Wall Street Journal report from the campaign trail in Pennsylvania on Friday that found Barack Obama digging himself a rhetorical hole on gun control, even in front of a hand-picked crowd.

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

So Obama went from saying he wouldn't take away guns...to suggesting he wanted to, but Congress won't let him. So he goes from suggesting to gun-rights voters that they should be worried about him as president, to suggesting they better elect a gun-rights Congress to restrain his gun-controlling impulses.

The national media has not really noticed the kinds of wild anti-gun proposals Obama has made in his career, like this one the Chicago Defender reported during his unsuccessful run for Congress in 1999:

Obama is proposing to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home.