Obama’s gutsy gun control push - By Joan Walsh

[DonViejo]

He’s asking for what he wants, not just what he thinks is possible. Hope that’s the template for his second term

BY JOAN WALSH

Second-term Barack Obama continues to show us he’s wiser and tougher than the guy who took office four years ago. The latest sign is his stance on his gun control agenda. In Minneapolis on Monday, he laid out everything he intends to push for, not merely pushing criminal background checks and tougher penalties for gun trafficking, but also the part of his plan that will be the heaviest lifting: an assault weapons ban.

This is what many liberals have hoped to see since his earliest political battles in 2009, going all the way back to the initial stimulus skirmishes: a president who tells the American people what he thinks will solve our problems, and who fights for those solutions, who demands congressional votes even on the most controversial agenda items – and who may, down the road, be forced to compromise on some of those priorities, only to fight for them another day.

Obama’s speech came in the wake of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre’s unpantsing by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” It was one of the most astonishing political confrontations in memory. Wallace called LaPierre “ridiculous” for suggesting the president’s daughters don’t deserve more protection than other children. He derided him for alleging with no evidence that background checks are a first step to a national registry that would allow the president to take away Americans’ guns. He called the NRA’s claim that the Obama daughters’ school has armed guards “nonsense,” since his children also went there and he knows Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school, doesn’t arm its security. Finally, he mocked LaPierre for suggesting that only the “elite” have protection, pointing out that the NRA head traveled to the Fox interview with his own bodyguards. He reduced the NRA bully to a sputtering wreck.

Just four years ago, LaPierre was treated very differently on Fox, when Glenn Beck invited him to come on his show and warn his paranoid viewers of Obama’s gun grab. Admittedly Wallace is less a partisan than the loony Beck, but it’s significant that Fox’s Sunday morning viewers heard a host debunk the claim that Obama’s coming for their guns rather than spread it.

-snip-

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/obamas_gutsy_gun_control_push/

[davidpdx]

1. I missed that interview

I might have to see if I can find it on Youtube. I don't watch Fox News, but seeing that slimeball squirm would be worth the laugh.

[hack89]

2. No harm for asking for more then you know is possible

standing up for your principles is not a bad thing.

[Jakes Progress]

3. Now that's the kind of thing I voted for.

Obama is in the right about this. Good on him.

[Cha]

4. Thanks DonViejo