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Obama

We’ve heard time and again how disappointed President Obama is with the fact that he hasn’t passed any new gun control legislation. The root issue there is that Obama sees any and all new restrictions on firearms ownership as “good” and “progress” no matter if they would have any impact or not — the “we have to do something” approach. A logical human would understand that the reason he has failed to pass his proposed gun control legislation isn’t that Americans don’t care, but instead because Americans are smart enough to figure out when a proposal will do irreparable harm to a Constitutionally protected right without reducing the “gun violence” being used to push that agenda. Having failed miserably in the seven years he’s had in office, Obama announced in an interview that he’s planning on using his last year in office to ram something — anything — through.

From the Washington Times:

In an interview published Tuesday in GQ magazine, Mr. Obama said easy access to guns is “the only variable” between the U.S. and other developed countries.

“The main thing that I’ve been trying to communicate over the last several of these horrific episodes is that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are not more violent than people in other developed countries,” Mr. Obama said. “But they have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”

Asked by interviewer Bill Simmons of HBO if gun control will be the “dominant” issue on his agenda next year, Mr. Obama replied, “I hope so.”

“We have this weird habit in this culture of mourning and, you know, 48, 72 hours of wall-to-wall coverage, and then … suddenly we move on,” Mr. Obama said. “And I will do everything I can to make sure that there’s a sustained attention paid to this thing.”

The recent attacks in Paris seem to contradict President Obama’s statement. Despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, multiple independent attackers armed with AK-47 rifles slaughtered hundreds of people on the streets of Paris. It was a mass shooting bigger than anything ever seen in the United States. So the idea that more restrictive gun control laws will instantly create a perfectly safe country is laughable at best and disturbingly divorced from reality at worst.

What still bothers me is the fact that Obama and his pals in the Democratic party still believe that any restriction on the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a good thing and “progress,” no matter what the actual impact of the law would be. No matter how small the restriction or how nonsensical the logic, the common shared belief is that any new law passed against gun owners is a step in the right direction. I’d be completely willing to work with the gun control activists if they were actually reasonable about crafting legislation aimed specifically at combating the “gun violence” bloody shirt they waive every time they propose a new law, but after reading so many proposals about banning barrel shrouds and exempting one version of a firearm they’re trying to ban simply because it comes in a camo pattern instead of black I’ve lost all hope.

If President Obama is serious about trying to reduce “gun violence” then he’d actually ask for the NRA’s help in crafting appropriate legislation. Instead he seems content to paint them as the enemy who must be vanquished.

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78 COMMENTS

    • At this point, it’s almost impossible that he doesn’t own significant stock in various gun and ammo manufacturers. There’s no other way to explain it. Surely he’s noticed that every time he talks about “doing something”, gun sales spike. If he wants fewer guns in circulation, he needs to shut the hell up…

      • makes one wonder if S&W, Glock, or Springfield aren’t dropping dollars in an account somewhere because of all the reverse sales pitches being flung around.
        Oh, the government doesn’t think I should have this thing? I think I’ll buy seven…

      • It’s very easy to explain. He has the mind of a statist.
        There is a disconnect between what he believes and what is happening. He sees his thoughts as so flawless that what he is proposing can’t possibly be wrong. Everyone else, even the world itself, must be wrong to differ with his view.

  1. I think that Friday night in Paris has discredited the statement that this doesn’t happen in other civilized countries. Also Charlie hebdo. And the train attack that was thwarted.
    How is it possible this clown is that uninformed?

      • That’s being very charitable. He’s not delusional and caught up his beliefs, because he doesn’t have any. Like almost every politician in Washington today, he’s a calculating, manipulative self-promoter who’s only in it for himself and his money backers. His “beliefs” are just talking points he spouts to convince the sheep he’s on their side.

    • He is not uninformed. And, he is not stupid.
      He is very calculating individual hell-bent to, as he stated, fundamentally change this country. Change it to what? Evidently some twisted sort of socialistic utopia where our lives are metered-out by the government.
      This is no longer the country in which I grew up.

        • A growing number of people are getting feedup with the government and are getting ready to change it by whatever means necessary. The government knows this and is trying to prepare. The Bundy incident almost set it off.

          It is coming.

      • Not the country I grew up in either but it is the country I live in. And will support the Constitution, all of it, to the best of my ability by membership in Pro 2nd Amendment organizations, voting for Pro 2nd Amendment politicians, showing up the polls for primary voting. Not voting is in effect, voting for the other guy, how do you think we ended up the guy who is living in the White House right now? 2016 is an election year, make the most of it, even if you have to hold your nose while casting a vote, still better a conservative, even a RINO, than a Hilliary. Our parents, grand parents, and great grand parents lived though more more than most of us will ever know – buck up and carry on

        • Indeed an accurate assessment of the current reality we face on RKBA and other collateral and/or fundamental issues of governance.

          Those who are lazy, ignorant of this reality or stubbornly trying to make a uselessly unnoticed statement and sit on their hands through any election are only helping our gun grabbing opposition.

          If we should again end up with an anti-gun oval Office Executive and two Democrat Houses of Congress it will be much easier for the Dems to restrict our gun rights. We need only look to places like the Peoples Democratic State of California to see how that works, especially if there were to as here be a rabidly obedient majority of anti-gun Dems in both Legislative Houses, a soon to be rabidly anti-gun Democrat Executive Office, and a left leaning Judiciary.

          Were that same majority Democrat composition ever to be realized on the Federal side, and no doubt this is the Democrats goal, it will be hell for the rest of us.

  2. I’m expecting the”Gun control” conversation to change into something else, their current push isn’t working and with the Paris atrocity their plans are shown effective only at increasing the body count. But they will rebrand and be back.

    • A coast-to-coast “gun free zone” would require a collection of acquired firearms from the general population. Me wonders how that will go? Not well, I would propose.

  3. > The recent attacks in Paris seem to contradict President Obama’s statement.

    No, they really don’t. And your meme-quote is inaccurate. Obama’s statement was not an absolute. It was qualified, with “this kind of frequency”, in the very next sentence.

    The claim is not about the exceptional atrocities. It’s not that in every single case no one can ever get weapons. Clearly, in every country with gun control, people of motivation can still get weapons. The claim is about the everyday gun violence, which is absolutely a function of the extreme ease of access to firearms in the US. People shooting 4 people at a party at 2am. Gang bangers in Chiraq. Domestic violence incidents that are now deadly because a gun is involved. The bulk of our 10k/year gun deaths. You know, the ones that people are actually upset about.

    • Umm, well, guns have been around for several hundred years and available for use in domestic violence circumstances, and indeed, up until 1968 were even easier to obtain than they are now–you could order them through the mail and have them delivered to your door. Without a background check. Gangs have existed in the US for at least 200 years, and thus there has been associated gang violence, predominantly in the big cities–just like there is today. You’d ruther they went back to clubs, chains and switch blades? Eliminating guns will not eliminate the violence as long as their are gang territories and illegal businesses to protect, whether that is drugs, guns, whores, numbers, and so forth. People getting shot at a party at 2 a.m. are, sadly, almost all black, and most of the gang violence is black on black. Taking away their guns, most of which were obtained illegally anyway, will not change the underlying violence. Making it harder for law abiding people to get guns will not make it any harder for thugs to buy street guns.

      Look, this is very simple. Guns do not CAUSE violence.

      And last but not least, the murder rate in the US has been dropping for the last 44 years, while the number of guns in circulation has increased by at least 1 to 2 hundred million. Since these numbers are inversely proportional, causation is disestablished. It’s common sense!

    • Let me break it down for you so simply that even an anti-gunner can understand.

      1. Self defense option #1: Hide under a desk. Call 911. Wait for complete strangers some unknown distance away – with guns bought by taxpayers – to come and defend you. Maybe throw a stapler or text book. If children are being shot, use your body as a human shield. That’s incredibly brave, but isn’t combat effective.

      By the way, most cops only shoot 50 rounds a month or less, whereas civilian competition shooters literally practice with more than 10 times that much ammo. Typical police response times are 5-10 minutes, and sometimes 10 times that long.

      Self defense option 2: Obtain a reliable handgun and high quality ammo. Most states still allow taxpayers to the same ammo that police use. With training, a person can draw from concealment and fire three rounds center mass on a man-sized silhouette in less than 2 seconds.

      In actual shootings, taxpayers are more accurate than police and are less likely than police to shoot the wrong person.

      My strategy, as someone who has actually survived violent altercations, is to take a gun to a knife fight. If I’m expecting trouble, and have the time, I’ll take an AR-15 or shotgun – like the Korean shopkeepers who defended their businesses during the LA riots or during the Ferguson riots.

    • That all sounds very reasonable until you consider that up here in Canada, and over in Australia, and in the UK, and in the EU overall (where a move is afoot by the supernational body to ban semi-autos) the anti-gunners are still pushing for even tighter restrictions, even more red tape, even more confiscations and bans.

      And yet, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Montana, and many other states despite having fewer restrictions on firearms manage to have low rates of murder and violence in general.

    • While I respect your opinion, the death toll from this one attack is equal to twenty of the average American “mass shooting” of four or more. A higher frequency matters little when there’s a lower severity- in many cases, because the United States can provide armed first responders, whether civilian or local law enforcement, much, much faster.
      Quite frankly, the US’s overall homicide rate is on par or lower than most “developed countries” when stratified by income level. That the President could say “easy access to guns is the only variable between the U.S. and other developed countries” is absurd. There are quite literally thousands of variables, the most notable of which is the US’s substantial drug woes.

    • @jsled: But why are we not trying to stop the 40K that are poisoned every year? How about the 30K plus that are killed in auto accidents? The 30K plus that are killed in falls? The 20K plus that are killed by “other” means that are not firearm related or any of the above? How about the 928K that die from diseases, medical malpractice and other medical related causes every year? Everything is relative and gun restrictions are not the answer.

    • What is the evidence for the statement that “access to firearms” is the problem? If that were true should america not absolutely have the most gun violence of anywhere ever? And yet we don’t. We have insular big city problems. Usually in places that are strictly regulated as far as guns go.

      How then can you say that ease of access is the problem? Give me more of your line of thinking because I’m not seeing it. At all.

  4. It’s a shame we don’t get to see any of the off-camera temper tantrums. 🙂

    Seriously, how slowly do I need to post to get rid of that annoying message?

  5. Forewarned is forearmed. This POS will do anything he can get away with. Let your representatives know that any attempts to restrict our freedoms must be stopped.

  6. Criminals and politics. Of course the Dems/Libs/Progs are going to try to make their political opposition into criminals while not doing anything effective about using gun laws to deter actual criminals.

    Josef Stalin commented, paraphrased (sorry, no cite – I have read a lot about the Soviet Union and I do not remember where I saw this): “You can safely employ a criminal to do the work of the state. If you are willing to allow him to pursue his criminal nature he will be your most trusted ally. A political opponent, on the other hand, can NEVER be trusted not to continue opposing you.”

    This was why he searched the prisons for men who could do the work he needed done and used them to send his political opponents to the Gulags.

    • Or to quote Shakespeare hundreds of years earlier in Julius Caesar, “Let me have men about me that are fat,
      Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

  7. I concluded just yesterday that Obama is an idealist, and his idealism keeps running head on into reality. He probably truly believes that if guns were gone, the crime rate would drop, and atrocities and “gun violence” would diminish. He sees in his mind’s eye a perfect and peaceful world that his idealism requires him to work towards, and this includes his social welfare programs, his desire to promote racial equality, and so on and so forth. But reality is uncompromising, and revels in its imperfection.

    • Nah. He’s no more an idealist than the last 3 guys that held the office. This guy is bought and paid for by the insurance industry. Insurance companies need victims. He literally caters every major element of his domestic policy toward cultivating victims.
      At least we know who he works for, and that he’s honestly not that great a salesman anymore. He was a community organizer with a dry sense of humor that managed to endear just enough people just long enough to make his bosses a shitload of money. At this point, he’s spent all that credit and I doubt we’ll see anything else of substance come from him, no matter how hard he bitches and moans about it.
      I’m far more scared of the Clinton mafia at this point- they’re practically mercenaries. They’ll work for anybody, and they are absolutely relentless. Their greed makes for a work ethic that makes President Tourney-bracket look like a pothead.

  8. He is stupid, he is also coldly calculating. He is working very hard for his friends who are our enemies and they could not have a better ally. In fact, our enemies could not have achieved 10% of what they have without his assistance.

  9. The best thing he could do for, not just “the children,” but this country, and the world; is put his forehead in front of the next gun that fires. Hopefully it’s a .45-70, or a .510DTC, or a…

  10. I’m going with the following: we (US) will experience a Paris style attack(s) next year and Obama will use this to force through attacks on the civil liberties of We the People.

  11. Obama is an ideologue who intends to change the fundamental paradigm by which the American People live. He does not really like, much less love America, as he took tutelage from the likes of America-haters such as Bill Ayers and Ward Church.

    He can see no other poInt of view than his own. He hears no other opinion than his own. He willfully ignores facts, and he is a willful liar who believes that whatever he says MUST be the truth because only he knows what the truth is. His delusion is his own infallibility.

    He will go down in History as the worst President ever, but because he cannot acknowledge he can ever be mistaken, he will go to his grave believing he was always right.

    If, by now, you (plural) believe anything he says or does, you, too, are completely delusional, or evil. His only reason for advocating more gun control is that he thinks he is still building a Presidential Legacy that will be revered and remembered positively. THAT is how insane the “Leader of the Free World” is.

    Whatever Obama succeeds in doing to further infringe our Second Amendment RKBA will be ineffectual in reducing gun-involved violence. What WE can do, for a start, is insure we elect a next President who rebukes and rejects everything Barak Obama stands for, loves America, wants to actually lead the Free World, and values the traditional American paradigm.

  12. You think we had a gun and ammo famine in ’08 and 2012? It will pale in comparison, if BH0 looks like he’s going to get the slightest bit of what he wants.

  13. Bring it on Bury Soetoro(you may steal the nickname). See: the historic congressional loses just last year. Anyone see the not unexpected revelation that the “air-head” apparent Hildebeast is drifting into post-menopausal senility and dementia?

  14. He will go after imports like he already has with 7n6, Russian guns, Steyr AUG pistol kits, and American surplus rifles in South Korea.

    Nothing we will be able to do about it and the vast majority of gun owners will not know it either or care.

    I predict a full-on ban of everything Russian and/or normal capacity rifle mags.

  15. “easy access to guns is “the only variable” between the U.S. and other developed countries.”

    Isn’t that an interesting sentence? Why include “developed” in that sentence? Well, because that way when anyone points out all the countries with no easy access to guns (legally, anyway) that still have sky-high murder rates, Obama can say “well, that’s not a developed country.” It’s ALMOST as if there are important variables other than “guns.” In fact, variables that are more important than guns! But let’s not worry about those.

    Anti-gunners seem to make a point of only using the variables that are convenient.

  16. FLAME DELETED When your commie spew drives the value of these 299.00 Saigas to 2000.00, at least you will be good for something.

  17. See I didn’t use to think he was stupid. But it’s harder and harder to maintain this stance. How in the world can you justify the sheer irrationality of this statement?

    “The main thing that I’ve been trying to communicate over the last several of these horrific episodes is that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are not more violent than people in other developed countries,” Mr. Obama said. “But they have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”

    This is literally saying that guns are the problem. That they literally turn you into a monster. I know people believe this but I can’t honestly see this as anything but irrational feelings based hokum.

  18. It is precisely the fact that we Americans are so heavily armed that has limited terrorist attacks in the US. If anyone has been paying attention, recent attacks by psychos/terrorists have been limited to “gun free zones”. Now that many people are ignoring the “gun free zone” signs, even these locations are dangerous to the “bad guys”. We can, and will, shoot back. I may only have a pistol against a rifle, but it’ll be better than laying there waiting to be shot.

    • I’ll join in.

      “No, honey, I’m not blowing money on another gun I don’t really need. I’m making an important political statement!”

  19. When was the last time almost 500 people (130 dead, 360 injured) were shot in a mass shooting in the USA?

    & I’m pretty sure Ak’s are not legal in Paris.

    ObamaFail

  20. “What still bothers me is the fact that Obama and his pals in the Democratic party still believe that any restriction on the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a good thing and “progress,” no matter what the actual impact of the law would be.”

    Because in the end it’s about the autonomy and ability to do for one’s self, both the fact and the symbolism. Getting rid of those. It all becomes perfectly predictable once you get that. You also stand a better chance in the game, once you figure out what the other guys really want & how they think.

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