Ever since the State of the union speech, president Barack Obama has promised to work around Congress wherever he can to implement changes which he feels are the “right thing to do.” These changes have included things like directing the EPA to change their rules about power plants and pollution, raising the minimum wage for Federal employees, and a handful of executive orders about guns that didn’t really amount to much. In the wake of the highly publicized shootings in the last week, though, the president made two very strong statements that indicate he is actively looking for ways to implement more gun control laws without involving congress.
First, Obama took an opportunity to praise Australia for their knee-jerk laws banning almost all guns and confiscating them from gun owners:
Couple of decades ago, Australia had a mass shooting, similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said, well, that’s it, we’re not doing, we’re not seeing that again, and basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws, and they haven’t had a mass shooting since.
Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There’s no advanced, developed country that would put up with this.
As we keep reminding people, the “gun violence levels” are not, in fact, off the charts. These group of shootings might seem to be proof of that “gun violence epidemic” that people keep crowing about, but in fact they aren’t statistically significant. The crime rate keeps going down.
Even if the concept of a “gun violence epidemic” were as the Democrats describe it, there’s no indication that removing guns (as Australia has done) will improve the situation or is even possible. Especially in the wake of the latest Supreme Court cases, it definitely would not be Constitutional.
Nevertheless, according to Obama’s spokesman, the president is looking to take further actions to limit American citizen’s ability to exercise their Constitutionally protected civil rights — without congress. From The Blaze:
“The president’s goal is to look for opportunities to act administratively, unilaterally using his executive authority to try to make our communities safer,” Earnest said, responding to a question the day that a gunman opened fire at an Oregon high school, killing one student and injuring a teacher. “We’re always looking for those opportunities. But none of those opportunities when they present themselves is going to be an acceptable substitute for robust legislative action.”
[…]
“And there are some, and they have unfortunately been bottled up in Congress and that is a disappointment to the president,” Earnest continued. “But that’s not going to stop the president from continuing to push for administrative steps that we can take to help reduce gun violence.”
Individually, these statements aren’t alarming. But taken together and in context with what the President has proposed in the past, something big might be on the horizon.
The media today seems to be constantly blaming “extremist” news sources for stoking the fears of Americans, and by extension causing the shooting incident in Las Vegas. But when the president is making statements of admiration about a gun ban and confiscation scheme I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job stoking those fears all by himself.