Guns in a divided America: Barack Obama’s despair over guns | The Economist

Guns in a divided America: Barack Obama’s despair over guns | The Economist:

More to the point, from the opening minutes of the town hall meeting Mr Obama defended private gun-ownership as both constitutional and rational. He recalled a campaign tour of Iowa when his wife, Michelle, had said that if she lived in a farmhouse far from the nearest sheriff’s office or patrol, she would want a shotgun or rifle for self-defence. Mr Obama suggested that the costs and benefits of gun ownership look different on the streets of Chicago or similar big cities, where handguns enable far too many murders, and 12-year-olds can obtain a gun more easily than a book. But he fell over himself to praise most gun dealers and gun owners as responsible, to note that suspicion of an overbearing government is a hallowed American tradition, and to promise that he has no intention of trying to restrict the right of law-abiding citizens to buy guns for self-protection.



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