Bush: Friend or foe of gun rights?

President Bush has never been much of a hunter, leaving to his vice president the dubious distinction of shooting a friend -- and campaign contributor -- in the face while quail hunting.

But today when the Supreme Court struck down Washington D.C.'s toughest-in-the-nation gun laws, the White House was quick to hail the court's embrace of "the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms." Later in the day, the president issued a separate statement making much the same point, calling himself "a long-standing advocate of the rights of gun owners in America."

The truth is that gun enthusiasts have long viewed the Bush administration with suspicion. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who attracted a strong showing among Libertarians in the presidential election, has openly called the Bush administration hypocritical on gun issues.

"The Bush administration recently surprised and angered many pro-gun conservatives by announcing its support for an assault weapons ban passed in 1994," Paul wrote in 2003. In the end, facing a tough reelection battle, Bush allowed the ban to expire, wrote Steve Watson on conservative talk show host Alex Jones' infowars.net.

And former Rep. Bob Barr, once a Republican congressman, now running for president as a Libertarian, has argued that the Bush administration has been more anti-2nd Amendment than the Clinton White House.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: David Bohrer / White House

Comments

[VultureTX]

Wow columnists with shot term memory. GWB became governor of Texas partly because of his supported for a Concealed Handgun Statute. The very same that Ann Richards vetoed a public referendum on. While his administration has been more opposed to Gun Rights, the president himself is ever a friend of the second amendment.

It needs to be pointed out yet again here that the Second Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do hunting. It's about keeping military-grade firearms in the possession of civilians in order to ensure that the US government can only continue to govern "by the consent of the governed." Of course Bush, being an enemy of the Constitution and of freedom in general, would have a problem with that. That's why he supported the Assault Weapons Ban. But at least Cheney did something right for once in his life and supported Heller in the Supreme Court case.