“In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent...”
They can’t even go ONE sentence into an editorial without lying their asses off.
On Obama in particular (From Robert Novak’s piece earlier this year, “Obama’s Gun Dance”):
“Obama’s dance on gun rights is part of his evolution from a radical young state legislator a few years ago. He was recorded in a 1996 questionnaire as advocating a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns (a position since disavowed). He was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which takes an aggressive gun control position, and in 2000 considered becoming its full-time president. In 2006, he voted with an 84 to 16 majority (and against Clinton) to prohibit confiscation of firearms during an emergency, but that is his only pro-gun vote in Springfield or Washington. The National Rifle Association (NRA) grades him (and Clinton) at ‘F.’”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/obamas_gun_dance.html
Does Roe v. Wade ring a bell? There was a case where the Supreme Court created a new "right" out of whole cloth, to the applause of the liberal cadre that runs the Times but to the detriment of innocent lives everywhere. In Heller, by contrast the Court simply read the plain language of the Constitution and reported what it obviously meant. Of course, only "right-wingers" would approve of such a methodology.
The bottom line is that the D.C. gun control law (like all others of its kind) did nothing to prevent criminals from committing crimes with guns, and only affected the law-abiding who might have wished to defend themselves. The Times resolutely refuses to even consider this line of reasoning, as well they might, because "reason" is not part of their vocabulary. How else to explain the insistence that "guns" are killing people without reference to the nature and intent of the people behind the trigger?