Obama Gun Gambit Fizzles

This is odd - I was expecting to see a story in the Missoulian about the press conference the Obama's Montana campaign held last Friday. Instead, they ran this story on Sunday that first ran first on April 17. The gist:

HELENA - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama face a tough sell with pro-gun Westerners as the presidential campaign heads to Montana, home of the nation’s last primary and one of the highest concentrations of gun owners in the country.

The same story. Twice. Anyway, it looks like Obama's comments in San Francisco (and maybe this story too) touched off a wave of panic by his supporters in Montana, and their "solution" was the hastily arranged conference call I heard about Friday. Yet I found nothing about it in the Helena Independent or Billings Gazette, or the Bozeman Chronicle. And the Missoulian runs the same story twice.

The only coverage I could find was by Bill Schneider at New West.

Stung by recent accusations that he doesn’t support the best interests of hunters, anglers and gun owners, presidential candidate Barack Obama had his campaign office hold a press conference call today to refute those claims and show “Senator Obama’s commitment to the rights and traditions of Montana’s sportsmen.”

An impressive line up spoke on Obama’s behalf, starting with Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission chairman and former state senator Steve Doherty, who pointed out that roughly half of the people in Montana’s hunt or fish and that he believed Obama would more strongly represent hunters, anglers and gun owners than Hillary Clinton.

So they assembled a list of lefty notables who hunt and fish to certify that Obama is an okay guy who won't take our guns away. Wow.

Apparently the Lee papers weren't impressed either.