28 August 2008, 12:23 pm
Meanwhile, former Joyce Foundation board member Barack Obama has secured yet another faux Second Amendment supporter in "lifelong Republican" Tony Dean, a long-time host of hunting and fishing television shows in South Dakota. Dean told the Dallas News he.s switching parties to head a Sportsmen for Obama group. A "lifelong Republican" that is "switching parties to head a Sportsmen for Obama group"? This is an interesting claim, given that Dean was mentioned by the Rapid City Journal in 2003 as a "possible Democratic candidate for Congress" who endorsed Democrat Senator Tim Johnson for reelection just a year earlier. Dean's efforts to draw gun owners to Johnson weren't enough, and Johnson's Republican challenger, John Thune, became a U.S. Senator from South Dakota. According to public records, Dean donated money to another anti-gun South Dakota Democrat, Tom Daschle, also in 2003. For Tony Dean to have "switch[ed] parties to head a Sportsmen for Obama group" he would have to have done so at least two years before Obama was even elected to Senate, and five years prior to he announced his presidential bid. Indeed, it appears the word "lifelong" is as difficult for Dean and the Obama campaign to define as the word "is" is to Bill Clinton. Dean is quoted by the Dallas News as saying he's "99 percent sure a President Obama isn't going to infringe on gun rights." But seeing as Mr. Dean, who at least one blogger has been dubbed 'South Dakota's Al Gore' because of his fervent belief in human-cause global warming, describes himself as a "moderate on the gun issue" who "opposes the NRA on most gun issues," his assurances about Obama aren't likely to be much consolation to pro-gun voters. On his website, Dean has castigated the NRA for having "done little to protect gun ownership" and for having differing views on conservation issues, even while posting op-eds from the likes of Humane Society of the United States Executive Director Wayne Pacelle, who has been quoted as saying "we are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States...We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state." Dean also wrote sympathetic comments of the New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina gun confiscation, saying "how do authorities know which gun owners (or looting thieves) were sniping at rescue workers; which gun owners were threatening others?" http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/5954... read more
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