Photograph by Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama departs the White House on Feb. 4, 2013 to Minneapolis to tout his gun control proposals.

The release of the White House photo showing President Barack Obama shooting skeet at Camp David comes two days before Obama travels to Minneapolis to promote his agenda for curbing gun violence, following the Dec. 14 shootings of 20 schoolchildren and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, by a young gunman wielding his mother’s semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle.

The photo of the president, recorded Aug. 4, 2012 at Camp David, was taken on a summer Saturday — his 51st birthday — two weeks and a day after a young gunman walked into the Century 16 multiplex theater in Aurora, Colo., and opened fire with a Remington shotgun and a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 semi-automatic rifle and a 100-round drum ammunition magazine that jammed, forcing him to move on to his Glock handgun. The attack during the midnight showing of “The Dark Night Rises” claimed 12 lives and injured 58 other people.

The day after the president was shooting clay targets at Camp David, a gunman with a Springfield 9 mm semi-automatic pistol who had recently bought the gun and three 19-round ammo clips walked into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and killed six people.

This picture was taken in the heat of a presidential campaign in which, despite the mass shootings that summer, neither Obama nor his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, were pressed to confront an issue that has haunted American society for years.

The release of the White House photo today clearly is an attempt by a president pressing for tougher gun controls to show that he understands the aims of law-abiding gun owners. Yet in many ways, the photo of the first gun-owner underscores something about the pervasiveness of firearms in American culture.

The president’s gun-promoting critics will not accept him as one of their own.

The Washington Times was quick to suggest that the commander-in-chief is no ordinary gun-owner. The paper quoted the CEO of Browning, Travis Hall, as saying of the shotgun pictured in the Camp David photo: ”I am fairly sure it is a Browning Citori.” The Times writes: “As the president is left handed, it could be the 12 gauge Citori 625 Sporting Golden Clays, adjustable comb, left hand. It features a gold engraving of a game bird transforming into a clay target on the receiver and retails for $4,799. ” (Various Browning Citori shotguns run between $3,200 and $7,000.)

And the Associated Press quoted a top official with the National Skeet Shooting Association as saying the White House photo suggests Obama is a novice shooter. ”This isn’t something he’s done very often because of how he’s standing, how he has the gun mounted,” said Michael Hampton, executive director of the San Antonio-based association.

The National Rifle Association, for its part, whose membership reportedly has boomed since the Newtown shootings, wasn’t offering the president any membership card today. The AP quoted  Andrew Arulanandam, NRA spokesman, as saying: ”One picture does not erase a lifetime of supporting every gun ban and every gun-control scheme imaginable.”

And then there was the photo itself. At a White House whose occupant suffered years of questioning about his citizenship and the authenticity of his Hawaiian birth certificate, officials today attempted to forestall all the likely Photoshop conspiracy theorists — likening a new breed of “Skeeters” to those nagging “Birthers.”

From David Plouffe (#whereistrump), manager of the first campaign and author of “The Audacity to Win:”

Attn skeet birthers. Make our day – let the photoshop conspiracies begin! m.flickr.com/photos/whiteho…

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) February 2, 2013

Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading. #whereistrump

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) February 2, 2013

From Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director-turned senior adviser:

For all the “skeeters”: POTUS shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012. bit.ly/WlDMYG

— Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) February 2, 2013

The picture is real.

We know Pete Souza, the White House photographer, a professional’s professional.

The president’s affinity with gun-owners remains a question, yet probably averts the real question here.

This photo of a sporting shoot two weeks after one massacre and the day before another, released as the president sets out to rally public support for gun controls following the most shocking mass shooting of all, isn’t likely to make any real connection between Obama and a gun-owning public. It’s simply another reminder that there’s probably nothing to worry about with guns in the hands of the right people. It’s the rest of them — and their high-powered weapons — that are the problem.

Original post is Obama’s $5,000 Shotgun Real McCoy, Wrong Question in Gun Control Debate? by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

A man places a plush doll at a makeshift memorial for Sandy Hook shooting victims on Dec. 19, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.

If there’s been a notable shift in Washington’s rhetoric about gun control since Newtown, public opinion has moved only modestly.

Following the shooting of 20 children and six educators at a primary school in Connecticut last week, American opinion about guns breaks s little differently in the Pew Research Center’s surveys: 49 percent say it’s more important to control gun ownership, while 42 percent say it’s more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.

This is the first time since President Barack Obama took office that more Americans prioritize gun control than the right to own guns, according to Pew President Andrew Kohut. “However,” Kohut notes, “support for gun control remains lower than before Obama took office. In April 2008, 58 percent said it was more important to control gun ownership; just 37 percent prioritized protecting gun rights.

Following a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater last summer, 47 percent said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 46 percent said it was more important to protect gun rights.

Opinion is divided over whether to ban semi-automatic guns – 44 percent favor such a ban, Pew has found, while 49 percent oppose it. Far more favor banning bullets designed to explode or penetrate bullet-proof vests (56 percent) and high capacity ammunition clips (53 percent). A ban on all handguns is widely opposed: 67 percent oppose it.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism also has found in the social networking media “far more discussion of gun policy following this event than after the 2011 Tucson shooting” of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. “In the social media conversation, calls for stricter gun control measures exceed defenses of current gun laws by more than two-to-one. <> Dec. 20, 2012.

Original post is Gun Control: Support Modestly Up Since Newtown Shootings by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

President Barack Obama wipes his eye as he speaks about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington.

Updated at 4:30 pm EST

We heard only a brief mention of politics today, as the president swept aside tears for the fallen children of Newtown, Connecticut.

That mention, made in passing during President Barack Obama’s statement in the West Wing following the fatal shootings of 26 people, including 20 children, at an elementary school today, included a call for governmental action.

The nation, Obama said in a televised appearance, will have to take some action against the carnage suffered too many times in too many communities — “regardless of politics.”

“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” Obama said shortly after 3 pm EST today, hours after police were summoned by a 911 call from Sandy Hook Elementary School after 9:30 am.

“I know there is not a parent in America who does not feel the same overwhelming grief that I do,” the president said, speaking of the “beautiful little children between the ages of five and 10 years old” who died at that school today, then pausing and wiping tears from his eyes. “Our hearts are broken today, for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children.”

“Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well,” he said. “They know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them far too early.”

“As a country, we have been through this too many times,” said Obama, who during his term has traveled to Arizona to console a community shocked by the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a public appearance. “Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children.”

Each time the news rings with random shootings — at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, this year, or at that mall in Happy Valley, Oregon, earlier this week  – talk of a political solution is stirred.

In a nation bearing repeated witness to community and schoolhouse shootings, each time, the politics of gun control are explained away as too difficult.

“We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this,” the president said at the White House today, “regardless of the  politics.”

This was a day for grieving and sympathy, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

“There… will be,” he said, “a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don’t think today is that day.”

Outside the White House later, as the winter sun started setting early, a small rally for gun control was taking shape, with some 50 people assembling on the street.

Alexandra Wilson, 28, arrived on her bike holding a sign written in red paint: “Enough is enough.”

“The press secretary said this isn’t the time to talk about it, but it’s the time to talk about it,” she said. “I’m here to show my support. I know we’ve got plenty of other problems, the fiscal cliff and everything, but we cant forget about this. It’s happening too much.”

Emma Fidel contributed from outside the White House.

Original post is Obama, Tearful: Action Needed — and a Gun Control Rally Assembles by Political Capital.

Photograph by Yang Lei/Xinhua News Agency/eyevine/Redux

FBI agent covers the broken window of the apartment of James Holmes, the suspect who opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The gun-slaying of 12 people in Aurora, Colorado, has barely moved the needle on public opinion about gun control in America.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 46 percent say it is is more important to protect the rights of Americans to own guns.

That is “virtually unchanged” from the 45 percent who put gun regulation over gun control in an April survey, when 49 percent sided with gun rights.

“Other recent major episodes of gun violence, such as the 2011 Tucson shooting (of former Representative Gabrielle Giffords) and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, also had little effect on public opinion about gun laws,” writes Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

Two thirds of those surveyed say shootings like the midnight attack in a movie theater in Aurora are just the isolated acts of troubled individuals. Just one quarter of those surveyed say shootings like this reflect broader problems in American society.

 The latest survey of 1,100 adults was conducted July 26-29. It has a 3.6 percent margin of error.

Original post is Post-Colorado Shooting: Gun Control Sentiment no Stronger Than Before by Political Capital.