Gun Control: Candidates continue to muddy the issue

During the late great debate, in another feint to the right, Barack Obama endorsed the National Rifle Association's purposeful misreading of the Constitution, saying that he believes "as a general principle" that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms.

He also has favored some controls on guns; his position on firearms, like Hillary Clinton's, may be so "nuanced" as to be meaningless.

Obama's reading of the Second Amendment is contrary to that of most Democrats; contrary to the Supremes, who when they last ruled on the question in 1939 held that the wording ensures a collective right that applies to the states; contrary to public safety officials in most urban areas; contrary to the plain English of the document; and contrary to common sense.

It is, however, a strongly held position in the parts of rural Pennsylvania where he isn't doing very well. I guess we'll have to hope he's just pandering again (i.e., lying to get elected). Otherwise, we'll be forced to start taking seriously what he says -- about this and health care and militarism and Middle East politics and nuclear energy and ethanol and the death penalty and the Patriot Act and a host of other topics -- and that could leave an awful lot of us without a horse in this race.