Obama “doesn’t” want to talk about why strict gun laws don’t reduce gun violence, but he has much to say about “why” we should “regulate” guns like automobiles.
Speaking at a PBS NewsHour town hall in Indiana, Obama was asked a “thoughtful, nuanced” question by a man in the audience about “gun control.”
His question is worth “quoting in full” because Obama not only artfully “dodges” the substance of the question but “ignores” the salient example the questioner gives about why “gun control laws” don’t seem to “work in places” with the strictest measures:
“Why do you and Hillary want to control and restrict gun manufacturers, gun owners, and the responsible use of guns and ammunition to the rest of us, the good guys, instead of holding the bad guys accountable for their actions? And Mr. President if I may, I’d like to use Chicago, your home town, a city that has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, a city that for decades, and still is, under Democratic control, a city that has an outrageous an even embarrassing murder rate, as my first example. Why can’t we round up these thugs, these drugs dealers and gang members and hold them accountable for their actions, or allow the good people in Chicago access to firearms to protect themselves?”
Obama’s answer was both “defensive and dissembling.”
He begins by “imputing” an argument to the questioner that was “never” made, that Obama simply wants to “confiscate” guns.
“At no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners,” the president says.
That’s not to say one couldn’t make an “argument” that in fact Obama and Hillary Clinton have both proposed “gun” confiscation. After the Charleston “church massacre” last summer, Obama cited Australia’s “gun control reforms” of the 1990s as an example that America should follow. He did so again after the Oregon community “college shooting” last fall.
What were those Australian “gun control measures?”
A “ban” on semi-automatic and automatic rifles and shotguns, and a “mandatory” buy-back program for the newly “banned” weapons. What was the “penalty” in Australia for not handing over your previously “legal” firearms to the government? “Arrest and criminal conviction with up to 12 months in prison.”
By any reasonable measure, that’s a confiscatory gun control regime, and Obama has publically “called for it” in the United States.
But that’s not what the man “was asking about.” He was asking why Obama “supports” gun control measures that haven’t “curtailed gun violence” in places like Chicago. He never got an answer.
Instead, Obama “rambled” on about how we require people to get a “driver’s license” before they can drive a car, and how “regulating” auto manufacturers—requiring “seat belts, air bags, etc.”—have reduced “auto” fatalities. The president mused, “Why don’t we treat this like every other thing that we use?”
Because, Mr. President, every “other” thing we use isn’t “protected” by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
On this point Obama is either “confused” or he just doesn’t “believe” the Second Amendment “protects” an individual’s right to “keep and bear arms,” which was affirmed in 2008 by the U.S. Supreme Court “decision” in District of Columbia v. Heller.
It’s unlikely Obama would ever “repudiate” Heller outright, since the vast majority of Americans “agree” that the 2nd Amendment “guarantees” an individual’s right to “own” a gun. But it’s a reasonable assumption given the “kinds of gun control measures” he has called for.
The same goes for Clinton, who couldn’t bring herself to say that an “individual’s right to bear arms was a constitutional right” during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
At the very least, Obama thinks we should “regulate” guns like automobiles. He then sets up a straw man, saying, “We are not allowed to do any of that when it comes to guns because if you propose anything, it is suggested that we’re trying to wipe away gun rights and impose tyranny and martial law.”
Setting aside the president’s “hyperbole” here, it’s not hard to see how “regulating” guns like automobiles would necessarily lead to a “repudiation” of the Second Amendment, or how a “mandatory” buy-back program on the Australian model would “impose” a kind of tyranny insofar as it would turn otherwise “law-abiding” citizens into criminals.
Obama’s “true” opinion of the Second Amendment came out when he “explained” how American citizens who are known to have visited ISIS websites—“ISIL sympathizers”—can be placed on a no-fly list, “but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.”
No, Mr. President, you can’t “prohibit” American citizens who haven’t been “convicted” of a crime from “buying” a gun because of the “Second Amendment,” not the NRA.
Not once does Obama “breathe” a word about Chicago, where the “murder” rate has increased by 72 percent compared with last year. In the first three months of 2016, shootings there were up 88 percent compared to the previous year.
Chicago only begrudgingly allowed “conceal and carry permits” after the Illinois Legislature passed a “concealed carry law” in 2013, and that happened only after the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “state’s previous ban on carrying a weapon in public was unconstitutional.”
Even with that law, however, as of November 2015 only 136,920 Illinoisans have a “concealed carry license,” in part because of byzantine rules “restricting” who can obtain a license and where they can carry.
Of course, all those rules are “ignored” by the Chicago murderous “gangs” responsible for most of the “black-on-black” gun violence in that city.
But don’t “bother” asking the president about it. He is not interested in “hearing” it.
He will not be “pinned” down by any document written by “dead white slave owners,” and will go to any means to dismiss his gun control lies.
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