Dartblog

Sen. Hillary Clinton as Annie Oakley?

That’s the image Sen. Barack Obama invoked yesterday in Pennsylvania. Obama and Clinton are currently exchanging harsh words over which candidate has the more “traditional” values. Certainly neither has a traditional life. I find it hard to imagine that any voter truly believes Clinton’s tales of learning to shoot with her dad as a young girl. It just does not fit with the image that we all know and [recoil from?]. Even if the tales were true, her record on gun control in her adult political life is abysmal. For once, I agree with Obama:

“She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsman, how she values the second amendment. She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley,” Obama said. “Hillary Clinton is out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better. That’s some politics being played by Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton is hardly the only one playing politics at this stage though. On his wesbite, Obama empty rhetoric to appeal to the need for sportsmen in his coalition. Such a response is typical for Obama’s campaign. His expanded “plan” states that he respects the right to own firearms, but that he also believes it is “subject to reasonable and commonsense regulation.” This is political double speak intended to appease sportsmen in the election cycle but allow him to sign sweeping gun control legislation when in office.

I find it offensive that Clinton is also distorting her background on the Second Amendment. Her husband signed into law some of the harshest gun control legislation that this country has ever seen. During the 1990s, she repeatedly supported harsher gun control laws including the Brady Handgun Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban. In 2003, she co-introduced the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban along with Senators John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Diane Feinstein. This new version of an already harsh piece of legislation would have banned my semi-automatic shotgun (thank goodness some of our legislators respect constitutional rights).

No matter how these legislators attempt to muddy the waters of their record, the truth will out.