During last week’s gun control consortium with CNN, Barack Obama made two particularly outlandish assertions:

“I respect the Second Amendment; I respect the right to bear arms; I respect people who want a gun for self-protection.”

“The way it is described is that we are trying to take away everybody’s guns. Our position is consistently mischaracterized.”

Conservatives know that’s a lie. But more proof is provided in a newly published op-ed by prominent researcher and crime analyst John Lott, who writes, “‘I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.’ That’s what Obama told me when we were colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School in 1996. Obama has also publicly supported a nationwide ‘ban [on] the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns’ as well as a ‘ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.’ Even as late as the 2008 Presidential primaries, Obama supported Washington, D.C.‘s handgun ban.”

Marco Rubio is right. If Obama could take away your gun, he would. He said so himself.