Obama skeet shooting: NRA says it's a ploy to confiscate guns

"During the campaign, when he said to people, 'I will not take away your rifle, shotgun, handgun,' they leafleted the country with flyers like this, 'Obama's not gonna take your gun,' 'Obama will protect gun rights,' ” Mr. LaPierre said. “And now he's trying to take away all three."

The flap over Obama’s gun-toting photo – at least one Republican lawmaker (Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee) has challenged him to a skeet-shooting competition at Camp David – comes as gun violence seems to be dominating the news.

The hostage standoff in Alabama, which began with the shooting death of a school bus driver, was into its sixth day Sunday. Former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle – said to be “the most lethal sniper in US military history” with 160 confirmed kills in Iraq – was shot and killed at a Texas gun range Saturday.

Even the Super Bowl – the nation’s greatest entertainment diversion – was scheduled to include an ad sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the coalition of more than 900 mayors founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The ad calls on lawmakers to pass rules requiring background checks on guns, reports the AP, and it is narrated by children, with "America the Beautiful" playing in the background.

The ad includes decades-old footage of the NRA’s Mr. LaPierre saying the group approves of background checks on all gun sales. LaPierre recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the gun lobby no longer supports such background checks.

The subject may be deadly serious, but that hasn’t prevented comedians from weighing in.

In The New Yorker, Andy Borowitz writes that the photo of Obama “set off a panic of gun buying across the US.”

“Right-wing opponents of Mr. Obama were behind the frenzied gun sales, saying that they were terrified by the image of an armed and shooting President,” Borowitz writes. “In an effort to stem the panic, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters today that skeet-shooting took up relatively little of the President’s time at Camp David, and that his favorite leisure activities were ‘actually badminton and frisbee.’ The White House later released a photo of Mr. Obama putting away his gun and never using it again.”

How much do you know about the Second Amendment? A quiz.

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