On skeet shooting, put up or shut up, Barry
That's the challenge from Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn who offered to go to Camp David and have a shoot off with the president.
"If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos? Why hasn't he referenced this at any point in time?" Blackburn said Monday on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
"I tell you what I do think," she later added. "I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I'll go skeet shooting with him and I bet I'll beat him."
Obama said in an interview published Sunday by The New Republic that he won't ignore the concerns of hunters and sportsmen as his administration pushes for tighter gun laws. To illustrate his point, he added an anecdote about his previously unknown penchant for shooting.
"Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," he said, responding to a question about whether he had ever fired a gun. He also added he has included guests on his skeet shooting outings.
Some found the comments puzzling and wondered why he hadn't mentioned his gun experience in the high-profile firearm debate over the past six weeks. The remarks especially fired up some conservative blogs and news outlets.
"We had this debate that is ongoing," Blackburn said. "You would have thought it would have been a point of reference."
When asked by Jessica Yellin, CNN's chief White House correspondent, how often the president goes skeet shooting, White House press secretary Jay Carney said earlier Monday that he doesn't know.
"He does go to Camp David with some regularity, but I'm not sure how often he's done that," Carney said during the daily press briefing.
Pressed further if there was a photograph of the president taking part in the sport, Carney said "There may be, but I haven't seen it."
We should be skeptical - very skeptical - of any claim to athletic prowess by this president:
He has long claimed to be a fan of the Chicago White Sox, for example, but could not name a single White Sox player when asked, and incorrectly referred to the name of their home stadium as "Cominskey Field." His basketball skills are also somewhat oversold: NBA commissioner David Stern said President Obama is "not as good as he thinks he is."
In his infamous bowling stunt during the Democratic primary in 2008, then-Sen. Obama bowled a 37, rolling his first ball straight into the gutter as the cameras rolled. Later, in an appearance on The Tonight Show, Obama mocked his performance as being worthy of the "Special Olympics," a remark for which he was criticized and later apologized
Obama's shooting claim is evidently meant to assuage critics of his gun control proposals by reassuring them that he shares their enthusiasm for Second Amendment rights--not just sport shooting, but hunting in particular.
I doubt whether the Secret Service would let the president handle a gun of any kind - especially since he has not demonstrated any knowledge or expertise in firearms during his entire public life. This is just another lie told by a president who can get away with it because no one in the media is skeptical enough to ask him for proof.