ARLINGTON, Va., July 6 /PRNewswire/ -- "Obama's shifts of positions on gun rights makes me think of a snake on roller skates," said John M. Snyder at a suburban Washington, D.C. Fourth of July TEA Party. "The President slithers and shimmies in the White House, throughout the country, and on the issues," he added.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070821/NETU041 )

He noted that Obama's record in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate showed "there was hardly an anti-gun proposal he would not endorse. He indicated he supported the District of Columbia handgun ban before the Supreme Court struck it down last year. After the Court's ruling, he said he agreed with the decision. He then campaigned as a candidate who would support individual Second Amendment rights.

"But when he had his first chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he named a candidate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who in January ruled with the Second Circuit Court in Maloney v. Cuomo that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states.

"That's not all," said Snyder. "He's trying to persuade the Senate to ratify the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA). This would undermine American sovereignty, and leave to an international body the delineation of Americans' gun rights and regulations of American firearm manufacturers.

"Perhaps worst of all is the Obama Administration's issuance of a Homeland Security Assessment implying that citizens who support gun rights or other American traditions constitute a threat to public order. That's directed against the 100 million people who own 200 million rifles, shotguns and handguns as well as against untold millions of other citizens. The Assessment even targeted returning American servicemen and servicewomen. In effect, the Obama Administration took aim at the American public and the American military. The public outrage was so great that the Assessment was withdrawn, but its issuance shows what these people really think."

A former National Rifle Association editor, Snyder is Public Affairs Director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Manager of Telum Associates, and serves on the board of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. Shotgun News recently named him the senior rights activist in Washington. He was a speaker Saturday at the Prince William County TEA Party in Woodbridge, Virginia.

SOURCE Telum Associates, LL.C.