Gun control target practice Gun control has suddenly emerged as the toxic issue of the 2008 presidential campaign, endangering Barack Obama's appeal among Democratic blue-collar and labor union households. The freshman Illinois senator has a long record of favoring gun bans in Chicaghttp and Washington, D.C., and a raft of other gun control bills that are anathema to gun owners, hunters and sportsmen alike. He insists now he supports Second Amendment gun rights to keep and bear arms that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld when it struck down the D.C. gun ban in June. But he refused to join 77 of his colleagues who signed a friend of the court brief to end the weapons ban and remains sympathetic to a broad range of gun ban statutes. Yet the Obama campaign has been running ads in key states with large populations of gun owners and hunters, insisting he supports the right to own a gun. He cannot run away from his record. The McCain campaign, the Republican National Committee and the nearly 4 million-member National Rifle Association are blanketing the country with ads, Web site videos and other broadsides detailing his record - especially in battleground states where gun controls are political poison....