Video: President Obama and Vice President Biden formally announced the specifics of their gun-control proposals in a press conference Wednesday.
In making his case Wednesday for tighter controls on gun ownership, President Obama used the document most often cited by firearm advocates to show that such restrictions violate the founding spirit of the nation — the Constitution.
By doing so, Obama sought to turn a perceived political weaknesses — his image as an aloof intellectual — into a strength, and, at the same time, to turn a perceived strength of gun advocates — the constitutional right to bear arms — into a potential weakness.
Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer at the University of Chicago, has been forced in the past to defend the legality of his legislative ambitions, particularly the health-care law he secured nearly three years ago.
But he did so in a different way Wednesday and with a different audience in mind — the moderate America beyond the Beltway that may find the National Rifle Association and its arguments against any gun restrictions as frustrating as Obama says he does.
Where his past legal arguments have been directed at Congress or the Supreme Court, Obama used what he suggested was a clash of sometimes-competing rights guaranteed by the Constitution to assure Americans across party lines that his proposals amount to a modest approach to a societal problem.
Polls show that a majority of the electorate shares his views. But he warned Wednesday that those who do must apply pressure to interest groups and members of Congress in Washington.
“The only way we can change is if the American people demand it,” Obama said before an audience that included victims of gun violence and their families, including parents of children killed last month in Newtown, Conn.
He added that that “doesn’t just mean from certain parts of the country,” the liberal states and enclaves where gun control has the most support.
“We’re going to need voices in those areas and those congressional districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong to speak up and to say this is important,” he said.
His challenge became evident immediately, as a number of congressional Republicans from just the kind of conservative districts Obama referred to issued statements denouncing his plans.
Using Obama’s unequivocal position toward Congress on the need to raise the nation’s borrowing limit next month, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.) said in a statement that “the Second Amendment is non-negotiable.”
“The right to bear arms is a right, despite President Obama’s disdain for the Second Amendment and the Constitution’s limits on his power,” Huelskamp said. “Congress must stand firm for the entirety of the Constitution.”
Other Republicans followed suit, citing the Second Amendment in each case.
But Obama made clear that he is eager to have an argument on constitutional grounds over whether a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well other elements of his gun-control package, are legal.
Citing a series of recent mass shootings, Obama listed several amendments, as well as the defining phrase of the Declaration of Independence, to argue that a gunman’s right should not compromise any others’.
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Obama invokes Constitution in arguing for gun control Updated at :
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
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