Three days after a gunman massacred twelve people during a screening of the latest Batman film, the nation’s largest gun lobby mailed a nationwide fundraising letter warning of an implausible government conspiracy to seize firearms:
“The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” the letter said. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.” . . .
The solicitation letter says that Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms” and potentially a “ban on semi-automatic weapons.” The suspect in the Aurora, Colorado killings, 24-year-old James Holmes, had four semi-automatic weapons at the theater, police said.
For the record, gun rights have actually expanded under President Obama. The most significant guns legislation he signed was a law allowing people to carry guns in national parks. And Obama has stubbornly refused to support new gun regulations even in the wake of three mass shootings — Tucson, Aurora and the recent Sikh temple shooting — that occurred on his watch.
These facts have done nothing to temper the NRA’s rhetoric, however. Indeed, NRA head Wayne LaPierre claimed last year that Obama’s entire record of keeping his distance from the guns issue is “all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.”