Bill Burton lies on air about Obama and guns

I saw a powerful commercial this morning from the National Rifle Assocition critical of Barack Obama and his stance on guns.

Megyn Kelly of Fox News grilled Obama spokesman Bill Burton on the air about an hour ago about that ad.

Kelly asked Burton if Obama ever supported a handgun ban--several times--finally, after rambling and spinning, Burton responded, excuse me, lied, and said "No."

Not willing to be shouted down, Kelly asked about the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precint Organization (IVI-IPO) survey filled out in Obama's name in 1996:

Do you support state legislation:

to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns: Yes.

Burton then fed Kelly the tired old line that a staffer filled out the form for Obama. The New Yorker wrote about that staffer in July:

In another episode that has Obama's old friends feeling frustrated, Obama recently blamed his first campaign manager, Carol Anne Harwell, for reporting on a 1996 questionnaire that Obama favored a ban on handguns. According to her friends, Harwell was furious that the campaign made her Obama's scapegoat. "She got, as the saying goes, run over by a bus," Lois Friedberg-Dobry (an early Obama supporter) said.

As I remarked in July, Obama's claim is totally unbelievable. The IVI-IPO, despite its "independent" moniker, is an über-liberal group that is much admired in Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood. He wouldn't just hand off a survey like that to his campaign manager--and if he did, he would have closely reviewed it before returning it to the group.

Ready for more? Obama has a nasty habit of blaming embarrassing incidents on staffers. It's time to place the blame on Obama. Comments Obama made to the Chicago Tribune in 2005 are posted on Obama's Senate web site:

I would feel very uncomfortable putting my name to something that was written by somebody else or co-written or dictated. If my name is on it, it belongs to me. (Emphasis mine.)

Let me repeat: "If my name is on it, it belongs to me."

Bill Burton, do you care to rephrase your answer to Megyn Kelly?

Technorati tags: Illinois legal 2nd Amendment gun control gun rights IVI-IPO Flip flop NRA