As far back as 2001, Americans for Gun Safety, a Second Amendment restrictive organization, commended Arizona Sen. John McCain for his stance on “closing the gun show loopholes.”
Their website says, “Americans for Gun Safety (AGS) is pleased to join with….Senator McCain, and the people of Colorado and Oregon in supporting these common-sense solutions that will help keep guns out of the hands of kids and criminals.”
That was when McCain ventured into the two states via slick television ad campaigns linking mass murders to gun show sales.
The site acknowledged AGS will spend at least one million dollars on an advertising and organizing campaign to support new bi-partisan legislation sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman.
Helen Thomas, matriarch of the left-wing press bastion commended him in Hats off to John McCain effort to close gun-show loophole.
During his 2008 presidential campaign, U.S. News and World Reports ran a Washington Whispers piece titled, John McCain still backs closing gun show loophole, in which they gift him with praise no genuine Republican would desire: “McCain’s comments will likely lead to some grumbling among the NRA crowd, but the organization’s officials say that McCain is a better supporter of the Second Amendment than either of the Democratic candidates.”
Some compliment!
Now The Hill quotes the Brady Campaign’s president Paul Helmke lamenting President Bush’s past support of gun owner’s rights and extolling Obama and the Democrats, joined by McCain, for implementing legislative restrictions:
“For the last eight years we haven’t had anyone in the White House who supported this. The president supports it, Sen. (John) McCain has supported it.”
McCain is signed on with Homeland INsecurtiy Chieftain Janet Napolitano, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Joe Lieberman (D/Ind.-CT) Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
Napolitano told Lieberman that she could not wait for Congress to take action.
“Anecdotally a number (of the guns used in Mexico drug violence) have been purchased at (U.S.) gun shows,” she said. “The issue for me … is that we need to act now and as you know that sort of a statute would take a while to wind its way through. I (have) to play the hand of cards I have, and the hand of cards I have allows me to do southbound seizures.”
And, if you guessed the speaker at the NRA annual meeting is Sen. John McCain, you win the prize of having your Constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights winnowed down.