According to a 1996 questionnaire he filled out while running for the Illinois Senate, Obama promised to support a ban on "the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." Even though Obama's handwriting appeared on the questionnaire, Obama's campaign would claim earlier this year that his staff filled it out and he was completely unaware of the answer he had given.

You don't have to go back that far to find Obama taking an extreme stance against gun rights. In 2004, while running for the U.S. Senate, he promised to bar citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. The Chicago Tribune reported then that Obama "backed federal legislation that would ban citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement." Obama explained his plan to pre-empt state concealed-carry laws with a federal bill: "National legislation," Obama said at the time, "will prevent other states' flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents."

Senator Obama also supported the District of Columbia's comprehensive gun ban - he said so in a February television interview with Washington's WJLA, available on YouTube. The D.C. gun ban prevented district residents from owning handguns even in their own homes. It required that long guns, all of which had to be registered, be kept locked and disassembled. There wasn't even a provision allowing them to be reassembled in the event of an emergency.