Obama Vague on Gun Rights

The AP is running the headline "Obama Supports Individual Gun Rights," and its story focuses on one aspect of Barack Obama's comments today on gun regulation: his apparent endorsement of an individual-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. During a press conference today in Wisconsin, Obama said he thinks "there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation."

However, as NBC's First Read reports, the sum of Obama's comments is a good bit murkier:

"The city of Chicago has gun laws, so does Washington, D.C.," Obama said. "The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gangbangers and random shootings on the street isn't born out by our constitution."

Remember, these comments come in the context of District of Columbia v. Heller, the challenge to the District's gun laws which the Supreme Court will hear next month. This case will mark the first time since 1939 that the Supreme Court has addressed the scope of the Second Amendment. The law at issue, Washington DC's Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, is a ban on the possession of functioning firearms. Handguns are prohibited entirely, and long guns are allowed only if they are "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device." A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that this law violates an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

For note, in defending its law, the District of Columbia has argued that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to bear arms. However, Obama appears to indicate support for the D.C. law while also saying he believes the Second Amendment does confer an individual right. Does Obama consider the D.C. ban to be a "commonsense regulation" that is consistent with an individual-rights view of the Second Amendment? If so, what meaningful individual right would the Second Amendment confer?

To be fair, Obama simply said that Washington DC is free to impose certain regulations on firearms, not necessarily the set of regulations it has in place. However, in the context of the widely-publicized and pending case, that would be a somewhat esoteric point to make if he actually believes the FCRA to be unconstitutional.

Update to add: I neglected to note that, in 1996, Obama said on a candidate questionnaire that he "supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." Now he says that has never been his position and that the questionnaire response was an error made by a staffer. However, the group that created the questionnaire said they also interviewed Obama in person in 1996 and that, at the time, he did not indicate that any of his questionnaire responses were incorrect.