President Obama - Gun Lover!

It was revealed yesterday that President Obama likes to shoot guns - a lot. One of his favorite things to do, it turns out, is to go to Camp David and while away the afternoon, wielding his favorite 12 gauge shotgun shattering clay pigeons. The New York Times reports that the president's entire birthday party celebration last August 4th was devoted to this pleasant and harmless pastime during an extended stay at Camp David.

The President's new chief of staff told the Times that it is sometimes hard to wrest Mr. Obama away from the skeet shooting range. "Back in October," Mr. McDonough recalled, "we were at Camp David and I had a lot of important policy papers for him to read, but he just couldn't get around to perusing them because he gets such a kick out of blasting away at those clay pigeons."

When Mr. McDonough was asked to say more about this, he smiled wryly and conceded that the President likes to gather his aides together to play a game in which each of the clay pigeons is a leading member of the Republican Party and the first one to knock the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, out of the sky wins the game. Sometimes, Mr. McDonough added, the President substitutes sitting ducks for the clay pigeons, in which case he enjoys making Rand Paul the primary target. Either way, Mr. McDonough concluded, the President gets a lot of satisfaction out of the game and so far has never lost.

Spokesmen for the National Rifle Association questioned these stories about the President's passion for skeet shooting but suggested that until he starts hefting an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine and uses authentic outlines of human being as his targets, he can't really be taken seriously as a gun lover. When the President starts to take advantage of recent concealed gun legislation and regularly packs a .357 Magnum as his weapon of choice, the NRA insisted, he can finally be affirmed as our first true gun toting chief executive since Teddy Roosevelt. The President's team refused to comment on the NRA's claim, though some observers witnessed Mr. Obama standing with an aide on the North Portico practicing his quick draw, periodically muttering, "go ahead, Wayne (a possible reference to the NRA's Executive Director Wayne LaPierre), make my day."