steve-chapman-chicago-tribune

Chicago Tribune scribe Steve Chapman (above) often writes about gun legislation. Usually, his prose is both reasonable and articulate. Not so his recent column excoriating the NRA.

As a gun owner, recreational shooter, former NRA member and longtime advocate of Second Amendment rights, I like to see cogent criticism of gun control proposals and anti-gun propaganda. But under President Barack Obama, the NRA has occupied itself sowing groundless panic and fighting imaginary villains.

Obama made it plain in his first presidential campaign that gun control was not a hill he was willing to die on. He assured gun owners, “I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

Why would anyone believe President Obama’s promises about gun rights any more than his promise “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”? “If you like your plan you can keep your plan”? Or his promise that Obamacare would “save $2,500 a year on your insurance premiums”? Should we forget the “red line” in Syria?

In short, winning Second Amendment supporters was important for Senator Obama’s White House bid. Gee. He lied. But according to Mr. Chapman, it’s Wayne LaPierre who’s the real liar.

After all, President Obama signed bills that restored the right to bear arms in national parks, forbade the EPA to ban lead bullets, and prevented Amtrack from banning the transport of unloaded guns on its trains. All measures included as unwelcome riders on omnibus bills that President Obama desperately wanted to sign — a fact that Mr. Chapman somehow forgets to mention, in his desire to vilify of the NRA’s Vice President.

Faced with this record, LaPierre has done the only thing he could do: lie about it. “When I said Barack Obama would come for our guns and do everything in his power to sabotage the Second Amendment, they savaged me,” he said recently. “But every one of those predictions came true.” Sure they did. And Adam Sandler won an Oscar.

The strategy has clearly served to frighten some gun owners and stimulate them to buy more firearms — you know, before Obama could outlaw them. Gun sales have set records under him, and gun companies have prospered. The NRA has found that it can only gain by stoking chronic fear of draconian gun laws.

Mr. Chapman admits that President Obama pushed for a renewed “assault weapons” ban, pushed to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and lobbied for “universal background checks.” Mr. Chapman lumps all these actions as insignificant and declare “These changes would have a minimal impact on law-abiding gun owners.” Really?

The NRA can go on depicting a dystopian nightmare in which gun owners are cruelly deprived of their right to protect themselves. But it’s a Halloween house of horrors, not the real world.

It is Mr. Chapman who is a delusional Fudd. He lives in the liberal fantasy world of the establishment media and their fake news bubble. Here’s hoping that Mr. Trump and his pro-gun allies burst that bubble soon, and once and for all.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch

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52 COMMENTS

    • You’re wrong. Gender is fluid, and only by it being such, can we break the social construct that is. Please, before making such rash comments, please check your privilege and investigate the preferred gender pronouns of all peoples/others. /SARC

      …did I sound like one of them? I’ve been practicing. I’m trying to become as dumb so as to maybe understand their stupidity.

  2. This is one of them motherfuckers that say”If barry says 2+2=5, then 2+2=5.”

    Keep doubling down on the stupid. Midterms are just around the corner and another gop sweep will be nice.

  3. Chicago Tribune huh? No wonder they’re going out of business. This bunch endorsed Barack Hussein Obama for President TWICE. And the latest was Gary “what’s Aleppo” Johnson. DUH…

    • “Freedom of speech isn’t working out so well for liberals now that they aren’t the only ones with a microphone. It’s not so much fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.” ― Ann Coulter

  6. The progressive socialist is a space alien. They are from a different world with different ways of thinking.

  7. Pure, unvarnished balderdash! This “silver-tongued” liar is so full of himself that he couldn’t tell the truth if it introduced itself with a calling card! All I have to say is “Yuck Foo”! (Try serving THAT with Shrimp Fried Rice).

    • For those who dont know, fast and furious was the Administrations attempt to “prove” gun violence is out of control, by funneling arms to a crap ton of bad guys. This would give them some political traction for gun control measures.

  13. So Obama lied on the campaign trail, pushed for gun control and failed once elected, and that makes him a 2A supporter? Man, the Tribune is full of horse manure these days…

  15. I would pose a couple of questions to this guy.

    Were there a new AWB, would it be retroactive? Surely with millions and millions of deadly “assault weapons” in circulation it would have to be to have any effect, no? Otherwise it would take decades if not centuries for those guns to wear out and make a future Adam Lanza cry for want of an SBR (Scary Black Rifle). Would the Trib writer consider such an retroactive ban a problem?

    What if the same were applied to mags over 10 rounds? Certainly with tens of millions (if not more) mags in circulation over that limit, in order to have any effect at all the ban would have to be retroactive. Would he not see such an action as a problem?

    Perhaps he would, perhaps he would not. However there is a certain document out there which has many, many adherents. Many of whom signed on the line and raised their hand while swearing an oath to defend said document. I would hypothesize that they would be none-to-pleased to hear that Article 1, Section 9 had one of it’s main protections gutted. Those folks, numbering in the millions, would certain see a problem.

    Prognostication: I would also surmise that, in the future, the 9th Circuit Court will uphold the direct violation of Article 1, Section 10 that California recently saw fit to pass. I would further surmise that Mr. Trump will appoint people to the SCOTUS who will bitch slap the ever living shit out of that 9th Circuit decision. That will be a happy day indeed.

    • He wasn’t. And neither would Hillary.

      After all, let’s be serious … they have people for that sort of thing.

  17. People love to talk about the NRA as if they have a strangle hold on the brains of every single person who owns so much as a pellet gun in this country. People love to have a scapegoat. “Scarface” made a great point in that scene where Pacino stands up and goes on a rant in front of everyone in the restaurant where he’s eating.

    “You need people like me, so you can point your fucking finger and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.'”

    And that’s what the media has made the NRA into- a bad guy that the malleable masses can point their finger at.

    • NRA, Inc. is controlled opposition in Soviet terminology. In intelligence terms, NRA has been penetrated and co-opted.

      When NRA state lobbyist for Illinois Todd Vandermyde cut the deal in 2010/ 2011 with the anti-gun IL Chiefs of Police to put Duty to Inform in the “NRA backed” concealed carry bill sponsored by state Rep. Brandon Phelps, Tim McCarthy of Orland Park was president of the IL Chiefs. The IL Chiefs of Police totally opposed any form of citizen carry for FORTY YEARS!

      That’s the same Tim McCarthy who was a Secret Service agent when President Ronald Reagan was shot, and the same Tim McCarthy who does events with Jim & Sarah Brady to promote gun control! NRA, Inc. and the “anti-gunners” are both on the same side: against you and working for the police unions.

  18. I agree with him. Obama was on the gun industry’s payroll from the beginning. He stirred the gun control pot in order to sow panic among gun owners and drive up gun industry profilts. He knew the Republicans would stop him. In fact, Boehner, McConnell and Ryan were in on it too. Only Hillary was stupid enough to fall for it. It’s all about the uniparty. Ted Cruz said so.

  19. I think if they passed an AWB I have perhaps three whole magazines that would be compliant. Two of which were picked up randomly at a yard sale or something. That says nothing about my 6 position stock collection or my bayonet lug collection. I mean, what practical mass murderer is going around with out a bayonet these days? It’s flat uncivilized to think of such things happening.

  20. He did? In what alternative universe? The one where he did not have staff diligently seeking for months to see how far he could go with his executive powers to enact “common sense gun reform”? The one where the ATF did not ban 5.45 rifle ammunition on the basis it could be used in a pistol and become evil “armor piercing” ammunition? Where the ATF did not try (unsuccessfully) to ban M855 .223 ammunition on the exact same basis? Where rules were not enacted that required FFLs within 500 miles of the Mexican border to report sales of multiple long arms?

    Wow. That must be some starship Mr. Chapman is flying.

  22. Mr. Chapman admits that President Obama pushed for a renewed “assault weapons” ban, pushed to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and lobbied for “universal background checks.” Mr. Chapman lumps all these actions as insignificant and declare “These changes would have a minimal impact on law-abiding gun owners.”

    And which of those things, among many others not enumerated, does not fit the description of “infringed”?

    In fact, by eroding the “…shall not be infringed.” wording of the Second Amendment these changes would have had a HUGE impact on law-abiding gun owners and exactly ZERO impact on criminals.

  23. “…it illuminates a problem that the organization and its allies will have over the next four years: how to sustain the fear and anxiety that have been so useful to them over the past eight.”

    NRA, Inc. creates job security for their lobbyists by allowing police unions to write the worst possible gun bills that are designed to get their own members set up and killed. Then NRA lobbyists have job security to “fix” the garbage bills they created in the first place.

    Look at what NRA state lobbyist Todd Vandermyde did in Illinois after the U.S. Federal Appeals Court in Chicago totally overturned IL’s UUW statute in Dec. 2012:
    Vandermyde fell all over himself to put Duty to Inform w/ criminal penalties in sponsor Rep. Brandon Phelps “NRA backed” concealed carry bill. The only people in the IL state legislature who opposed DTI on the record in 2013 were Chicago area Black Caucus Reps. LaShawn Ford, Will Davis, and Chris Welch! You have to smell a rat in Springfield when liberal Democrat Black Caucus Reps are fighting to remove Duty to Inform while Phelps, Vandermyde, and the rest of the white racist hick losers in southern IL are the ones who won’t take DTI out of the NRA bill.

    Wayne LaPierre was invited to debate President Obama but he didn’t have the guts to show up. He’s brave when he’s in the room at the NRA convention surrounded by his peeps, but if Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham at NRA/ ILA can’t or won’t keep a leash on sellouts like Vandermyde that put up bills which are specifically designed to allow police criminals to execute armed citizens like Philando Castile, it’s time to get real about what NRA, Inc. really is: a self-perpetuating racist bureaucracy that roams around the countryside like Frankenstein, totally out of the control of the elected rubber-stamp board, feeding on the blood of it’s own membership after throwing them under the bus.

    • kapo bloomberg got his monies worth with you, demo. But here’s a bit of news. hillary lost. Much as that hurts you its time to move on.

  25. Like Holocaust deniers, anti-gun cultists ultimately have nothing on which to fall back except lies.

    Both Obama and Clinton endorsed “Australian style” gun control.

    That’s REGISTRATION FOLLOWED BY CONFISCATION.

    MANDATORY “buybacks” are CONFISCATION. Any claim to the contrary is an infantile lie, equivalent to portraying slavery as “voluntary” because the slaves work in preference to being whipped.

  26. Usually, his prose is both reasonable and articulate

    Seriously? Chapman is a big government liberal who masquerades as a libertarian-leaning centrist. He never met a paternalistic solution he didn’t like. Ugh.

  28. For a Democrat Obama HAS BEEN pro second amendment. By that I mean he’s largely ignored the whole thing. A few executive orders that can be undone in seconds with a stroke of trump’s pen, but no attempts at any legislation whatsoever. Chapman is absolutely correct when he says that the NRA has been fear mongering Obama, and the NRA really is kinda screwed. Look, I hold no federal gun law on the books as constitutional, but the NRA has been banging the drums of gun confiscation so long it doesn’t know how to do anything else. Thirty years or so now. Fact is Barry is the best we could have hoped for from the left – too weak to do something in an area that he honestly doesn’t seem to care about.

    The NRA and the gun industry as a whole as heading for lean times. There won’t be any more panic buying. Confiscation is not happening, not when the president elect is actually talking seriously about another constitutional amendment to make concealed carry the law of the land and he has a whole team of people in his transition staff that are tasked with ONLY 2nd Amendment issues. We haven’t won yet, not until the bills are forced through the senate via the nuclear option and Trump adds his John Hancock. But we’re close to at chipping away at the NFA34/GCA68 via the hearing protection act. First time ever. Once it’s done once, the floodgates can be forced open. So no more scare tactics. No more talk of defeat. Now we talk of victory that will be ours after this fight.

  29. He’s trolling for anti-gun $$$ because that’s the only $$$ floating around after the election.

    It’s a nuclear winter scenario until the next interim elections and they didn’t get a big enough black Friday with the last election to keep most of them from flipping burgers.

    So, don’t give them freedom of the press here, don’t show pictures of his dumb a_ _,, don’t tag his article.

  30. What’s even more astonishing is that the flagship libertarian publication in our country, REASON, just published this malodorous article on its website as well. “Gun Paranoia in the Age of Trump”: http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/21/gun-paranoia-in-the-age-of-trump.

    I was very sympathetic to the libertarian movement for a very long time. And, indeed, I still feel that the government that governs best governs least. But between Bill Weld and stuff like this, it strikes me that politically, Libertarian Officialdom just isn’t as concerned about the right to keep and bear arms anymore.

    And, indeed, Chapman’s article, which seems to be based on a soft, socially progressive libertarianism that’s acceptable to the folks in the legacy media, is just a symptom of this.

    I recall reading a speech by P.J. O’Rourke at the Cato Institute back in 1993 in which he proudly proclaimed that Cato (and, by extension, libertarians generally,) were dedicated to “nothing”. (https://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/liberty-manifesto).

    I think this is more an example of moral bankruptcy than anything. We had 20 years of being dedicated to nothing. Perhaps we ought to be at least aiming at…something?

    (I note that O’Rourke endorsed Hillary this year. Dedicated to nothing, indeed.)

  32. Steve Chapman: “As a gun owner, recreational shooter, former NRA member and longtime advocate of Second Amendment rights”?

    Yeah right, we are supposed believe this pantywaist is a willing gun owner, recreational shooter, former NRA member and 2nd Amendment advocate?

    What’s more likely is this devout Libtard and yellow rag propagandist bought a gun so he can claim he’s a “gun owner, shot as “recreation” just so he could observe us while “undercover” at a range and later vilify REAL firearms owners, joined the NRA so he would receive their mailings and use their writings against them and asserts he’s a 2nd Amendment supporter all in order to claim the moral high ground in advancing “the Left’s” anti-gun agenda.

    What is clear is that Steve Chapman is a “Liberal”, a “Chicago Liberal” thus a Communist/Marxist and gun-grabbing piece of fecal matter, don’t believe a word he says, scribbles, or pecks when he claims to be a 2nd Amendment “supporter”.

    Remember this, “the Left” is NEVER to be trusted, MSLGBTQ’s Rachel Maddow met her (or is it “his”) “wife” an “arr-teest” known for it’s “political” renderings at an NRA-sponsored event, both are virulently anti-gun but attended the gathering in order to obtain information they could later use as propaganda against us.

  33. In related news, the notoriously pro-religion President Obama continued not calling for thr fire-bombing of churches, and limited his administration’s coercion of nuns to harassment, public shaming from “the buloy’s pulpit”, n federal suits … not a single SWAT raid, or lynching.

  35. so this site is going to be just as bad at stoking the fires of fear because they know plenty of paranoid people with limited iq will gladly follow along like a fat housewife watching her soaps and getting worked up over nonsense.

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