President Obama has never been our president. I first cottoned onto this fact when he called a bipartisan meeting on his proposed health care law. The President of the United States stood at the lectern and browbeat the Republican politicians gathered at his feet to work out a compromise.
I’m not saying that President has any obligation to build consensus, I’m saying that the best President is one who represents all Americans, Democrat, Republican, whatever. Even those who detested President Bush the younger – and they were legion – rallied behind him when he rallied the country after 9/11. The same was true when Reagan addressed the nation after the Challenger disaster.
And it’s not just national tragedies that should inspire a President to bring us together as a nation. They should use the bully pulpit to unify us when we face any threat to our constitutional republic. When they swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, their deeds and their rhetoric should reflect that commitment.
Clearly, President Obama doesn’t believe that the Second Amendment means what it says. He doesn’t believe that background checks — universal or otherwise — infringe on our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Nor does he seek to find common ground with those who oppose his view by, say, directing the Department of Justice to help close the “revolving door of justice” that allows armed criminals to roam our streets.
I fully admit that I thought President Obama would leave our gun rights alone. I was wrong. When candidate Obama derided rural voters for clinging to their guns and their religion I should have known that the future President lacked respect for gun owners and gun rights. For the Constitution of the United States of America. My bad.
What I missed: the President’s condescension. He considered — considers — religious, gun-owning Americans to be inferior; people who lack enough indoctrination education to understand and agree with his interpretation of the Constitution. Which somehow doesn’t include the protection of their right to keep and bear arms. In short, gun owners are “the other.”
Like so many gun control advocates, the President hides his disgust for gun owners by appealing to those who [supposedly] support gun control. Hence his constant referral to a 2013 Washington Post/ABC poll that asked, “Would you support or oppose a law requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows?” Some 90 percent of registered voters supported the idea.
The question did not ask, “Do you favor or oppose stricter gun control laws?” In 2015, three weeks after the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College claimed the lives of nine people, Gallup put that exact question to Americans. Some 52 percent opposed stricter gun controls. Why the disparity? Because Americans favored background checks at gun shows but not other gun control laws.
We could talk about the apparent contradiction, but I’d prefer to talk about the “shall not be infringed” part of the Second Amendment. Regardless of how many Americans support background checks at gun shows, the majority view their gun rights as inviolable. Not all Americans understand the slippery slope argument, but the majority consider their gun rights sacrosanct. In the same way that most Americans supported “separate but equal” facilities for minorities back in the day while opposing racial discrimination.
This has nothing to do with the “gun lobby.” Which is what? The NRA’s five million members? The firearms industry? Does the President believe that pro-gun rights lobby groups and manufacturers producing firearms have hoodwinked 52 percent of Americans into opposing stricter gun control? He does. He believes that the majority of Americans — including some 150 million gun owners — have been brainwashed into opposing his plans to disarm Americans.
The President can’t blame the general public for frustrating his attempts to create a system that leads to federal gun registration. He has to blame “the gun lobby.” They are the “other” that has led Americans astray. This demonization gives him the moral and [he supposes] legal authority to steamroll over those who defy his…more educated view of how to reduce “gun violence.”
Or does it? We’re going to find out. Not only in the aftermath of his new executive orders on gun control, but also in the voting booth. Come the general election, there will be a price to pay for his arrogance. Or so we hope. One thing is for sure, though: Americans will not surrender their guns. Not for the President of the United States and not for those government functionaries in so-called slave states who work tireless to degrade and destroy Americans’ gun rights.
Truth be told, every one of us who owns guns, whomsoever cherishes their right to keep and bear arms, belongs to “the gun lobby.” More specifically, I am the gun lobby. And so are you. And we will not be deprived of our rights. No matter how this battle goes, not matter what “our” president has to say on the matter, we will not give up the fight for our rights. Not now, not later, not ever. Because we know what happens to a disarmed populace. And we are not those people.