By J. D. Heyes | Natural News

It is one of the most politically charged – and politically hypocritical – issues in the country: the battle over gun rights, the Second Amendment in general, and what the founding fathers actually intended when they included the subject of firearms ownership in the Bill of Rights.

Generally, the issue comes up during a high-profile shooting, such as the mass murder of moviegoers attending the premier of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado this past summer, or when NFL player Javon Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend before turning the gun on himself in front of his head coach and general manager this month.

But occasionally, the subject of gun control vs. gun rights makes headlines because of the tremendously hypocritical nature of the person or persons involved.

Before this week, few people outside of Illinois had heard about state Sen. Donne Trotter, one of several Democratic candidates planning to run for a U.S. House seat currently held by Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who announced in November he was resigning amid charges that he misused campaign funds (another case of hypocrisy for another time).

‘It’s important for us to act on this’

Trotter, who is chairman of the Senate Democratic majority caucus, was arrested Dec. 5 on federal charges of attempting to board an aircraft with a weapon at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, a Class 4 felony. That’s bad enough, but what makes this even more noteworthy is that Trotter, who has been in the state legislature since 1989, “has been a longtime gun-control advocate who opposed concealed carry legislation in the state,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“In an unsuccessful Democratic primary bid in 2000 against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, Trotter chided another candidate in the contest for being absent from a special legislative session during a crucial gun-control vote,” the paper said. That other candidate was then-state Sen. Barack Obama.

“It’s important for our constituents to be here to act upon this one way or another,” Trotter said at the time.

In addition to opposing concealed carry, Trotter has worked to outlaw semi-automatic rifles that are often misidentified as “assault weapons,” because they resemble military-grade weapons.

In 1995, he went up against fellow state senator Kirk Dillard, a Republican, after the latter proposed a concealed carry law. Trotter echoed the oft-used language of the statist in arguing that concealed carry laws would create a society of vigilantes, a phenomenon that simply has not happened in any of 40-plus states that have allow concealed carry (Illinois, by the way, is the only state where this right is denied, according to the USACarry.com website, which tracks such laws).

And yet, here is Trotter, just a few days ago, showing up at an international airport with a handgun in his carry-on bag.

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