Back in September 2010, President Obama told a member of the TCU rifle team that he practiced shooting rifles with the Secret Service. Now we learn that he’s a skeet shooter. In fact, the CIC does it “all the time.” Here’s the relevant excerpt from an interview just posted at newrepublic.com:
Franklin Foer: Have you ever fired a gun?
President Obama: Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.
FF: The whole family?
President Obama: Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.
Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were ten, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family’s traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that.
So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.