Interesting little factoid . . .
While doing research for his newest book, The President’s Shadow, author Brad Meltzer came across an interesting fact at Secret Service headquarters: Ronald Reagan “carried his own gun” with him while president.
Ive thought about this as well. Is the president allowed to keep personal guns at the white house? If I became president could I keep an AR in the bedroom?
Doubt it, after all the District of Columbia has there insane gun laws. But if your a member of the liberal media you CAN possess “high capacity boxed magazine feeding devices”.
Cool, I can believe that…
I think of something like this…
But probably more like a snubby (well from that angle it looks like a snubnose)…
Executive order… just sayin’
F that. Presidential pardon- a whole stack of them.
Typical Hollywood liberal.
I am pretty sure you can do what you want when you’re president. Who is gonna say no?
Well if the president can do it, shouldn’t we the people be able to do it too?
Did Reagan have to take 16 hour course, get fingerprinted, get background checked, and pay a bunch of fees to carry? Hmm…
Bah. Executive privilege.
Reagan was no friend of the 2A.
Well he did give us FOPA, which is a damn sight better than much of what we got in later admins. He might not have been a staunch 2A supporter but he wasn’t an enemy the likes we have seen since.
Name one President who was more pro second amendment since Teddy Roosevelt.
Even after being shot her refused to jump on the “ban guns” bandwagon. Instead he scuttled a significant portion of the 1968 gun control act and that was with a Democratic majority Congress. People want to criticize him for supporting the Brady Bill, and this was when he was no longer in office, but the Brady Bill didn’t “ban” anything. Waiting periods might be pretty pointless and background checks don’t prevent most criminals from getting guns. But it’s not like the Bush 89 Import Ban.
…at least Bill Clinton’s ban had a sunset.
The Reagan ban will stay with us until the end of the Republic.
Are you referring to the “'86 Machine Gun Ban” (FOPA)?
If so, then I eagerly await Steyr’s rebuttal.
So you would prefer he didn’t sign FOPA, all the provisions of the 68 GCA remain intact and machine guns simply get banned by Bush or Clinton?
If you truly believe that the domestic machine gun ban wouldn’t have been closed by Bush 41, Clinton or Bush 43 you really are kidding yourself.
As far as the Clinton Ban, you seem to forget that under Bush 43 a Republican MAJORITY Congress successfully amended it to Larry Craig’s industry protect bill and only Larry Craig prevented the bill from becoming law.
It came down to ONE GUY, who apparently likes to troll airport bathrooms for dates, to prevent the Clinton ban from being renewed permanently.
BTW, if anyone really doesn’t understand why Reagan signed FOPA, please read this.
There’s no way he knew who would be president in the future or what they would be inclined to do.
I would prefer that he act morally, and in line with the United States Constitution.
He did not do that, and the Reagan Ban was not the only example of that behavior during his administration.
He had the option of not signing unconstitutional BS… just like he did when the Mulford Act hit his desk as governor.
During his entire political career he had a history of making new gun laws… as you point out, some were OK, others were downright unconscionable and destructive to our Freedoms.
I believe if Reagan never governed in California, it would still be possible to live there.
That’s politics.
When do we get a crack at Reagan’s Evil, unconstitutional BS just disappearing?
(Never… he was good like that.)
We’ll you are correct. He had no way of knowing who would be President after him. What he did know is that since 1968 the NRA had been trying to undo parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act and this was the FIRST TIME a bill successfully made it through Congress and reached a President for signature.
Well the alternative was H.R. 3155 Racketeer Weapons and Violent Crime Control Act and I don’t think you’d have been happy if we got that one instead. I just don’t think you fully grasp that there was no scenario where domestic machine guns were not going to be banned.
The difference is they wanted silencers too and there was no grandfather clause. Today there would be no transferable machine guns at all. NONE. Reagan and the NRA understood what they were going after, sadly we got the best deal.
More importantly, it can be undone. All we need to do is get rid of the “sporter clause.” And given the fact that Reagan gutted much of the 1968 GCA back in '86, there is precedent for it. If you remove the “sporter clause” you remove the process that permits the 86 MG ban, the 89 import ban and a bunch of other crap.
You should concentrate on trying to help bring that about instead of criticizing Reagan for making the best possible choice at the time.