Gun Owners Energized, Gun Control Fades Under Obama

The group says its membership has gone up by 30 percent since November. Federally required background checks of prospective gun buyers jumped to more than 1.5 million in November and December and are staying high, FBI figures show. There were more than 1.2 million checks last month -- 30 percent more than in April 2008.

"The Obama administration deserves credit for the only part of the economy that's going strong – gun sales," NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox said to cheers from tens of thousands of members at the group's annual convention last week in Phoenix.

Polling shows growing support for gun rights, a trend some analysts link to a steep drop in the murder rate in the late 1990s that has been sustained. In a Pew Research Center poll last month, 49 percent said controlling gun ownership was more important than protecting the right to own guns and 45 percent said the reverse. A year earlier the gun control position dominated by 58 to 37 percent. And an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll last month found 53 percent support for a ban on assault weapons, down from 75 percent support in 1991.

In Congress, meanwhile, moderate Republicans who sometimes support gun control measures are a vanishing species. And some recently arrived Democrats – including both senators from Virginia -- are from states with strong gun-rights traditions. Last week the Senate voted 67-29 to allow firearms in national parks.

There's been a lot of debate lately about the influence of the NRA on elected officials. Through the miracle of livestreaming, the group offered an unfiltered look at its annual meeting and its first principles.

In NRA World, what makes America most special and most free is our right to buy pretty much any gun we want. And the only thing standing between America and the end of liberty is the Second Amendment. "A disarmed people will not remain a free people," NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in Phoenix.

One event, the Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum, featured videotaped messages of solidarity from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Top conservatives at the scene included 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, once and future hopeful Mitt Romney and possible prospect Haley Barbour.

Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, proclaimed his "greatest respect" for sheriffs, police and all those who protect the public safety. Thought bubble over my head: And yet, the NRA has fought furiously against two of their top priorities, a renewed ban on most assault weapons and a requirement that unlicensed dealers at gun shows do background checks of buyers, just as gun shops must.

GOP National Chairman Michael Steele dramatically repeated the last four words of the Second Amendment: Shall not be infringed. Shall not be infringed." Yes, that's what it says, yet (thought bubble alert) even Antonin Scalia – one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court – wrote last year that some regulation of guns is constitutionally permissible.

Radio talk-show host Michael Reagan seemed to equate gun-control advocates -- whose ranks include police officers and former White House press secretary James Brady -- with John Hinckley, the mentally disturbed gunman who shot Reagan's father the president along with Brady and two others in a 1981 assassination attempt. Only one of the four victims later called for gun control, Michael Reagan said, referring to Brady. He added: "The crazies now are not carrying guns, they're carrying legislation."

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, slightly off topic, said President Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. As proof he offered this Obama statement last month at a news conference in Strasbourg, France: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Bolton left out the rest of Obama's answer, in which the president diplomatically built a case that America is, in fact, exceptional. The United States, the president said, "remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional."

That probably wouldn't have done it for the Phoenix faithful. To satisfy them, Obama would have had to define American exceptionalism as our right to amass home arsenals.

Obama was not reticent about his positions during the campaign. "Don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals," he said in accepting his party's presidential nomination in August.

As president, however, he has repeatedly dashed the high expectations of gun-control advocates. He said recently that it won't be easy to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that was allowed to expire in 2004, so he's focused for now on better enforcement of existing laws. And he proposed a Justice Department budget that repeals only one part of the "Tiahrt amendment" limiting access to federal information about guns used in crimes.

Obama would let local law enforcement have access to the federal data, but he let stand a requirement that the FBI destroy certain background check records within 24 hours and a prohibition on requiring gun dealers to keep an inventory and report loss and thefts. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-founder of the 350-member Mayors Against Illegal Guns, calls the two remaining restrictions "anti-police."

Former Fort Wayne, Ind. mayor Paul Helmke, a Republican who now heads the Brady Campaign for Handgun Control, adds another missed opportunity to the list: a rash of recent shootings that left 14 dead at an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y.; eight killed in a shooting rampage at a nursing home in Carthage, N.C.; four police officers killed in Oakland, Calif., three police officers killed in Pittsburgh.

It was frustrating that Obama didn't respond to these killings, Helmke says, particularly since they occurred around the April anniversaries of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings. "He could have sent the signal that this is still something that's important to him," Helmke says. "He could have said, 'This is an issue we need to deal with. We plan to get to it.' He could have helped lay the groundwork for this future fight."

Gun control advocates are betting that Obama will want to fulfill at least one of his campaign pledges on guns, and that it will be the closing of the gun-show loophole. It's a logical step, it levels the playing field for shop owners who currently must do the background checks, and the checks already are required at gun shows in California and 17 other states.

But the NRA has its own view of what's logical and, indeed, what's fundamental about America. So all bets are off.