Using young children as cheap propaganda props, President Obama unveiled his deeply controversial anti-gun proposals on Wednesday amid a series of false claims about having public opinion on his side. Among the most extreme, aside from some two dozen executive decrees he signed, was the announcement that the administration would push for an even more draconian so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” purporting to criminalize popular semi-automatic firearms. Restrictions on magazine capacity as well as mandatory “universal background checks” that could obliterate gun shows and private firearm sales are also at the top of the agenda.
Analysts on all sides of the issue said the package was the most aggressive assault on the Second Amendment in decades. However, with resistance building nationwide — state governments, sheriffs, police chiefs, and more are all vowing to protect gun rights in their jurisdictions — Obama’s attack may end up falling flat. The GOP-controlled House of Representatives is unlikely to budge, at this point at least. And in the Senate, RINOs and even some Democrats have already spoken out against the administration’s unconstitutional schemes. At least two Republican congressmen are now openly talking about impeachment.
Ironically, perhaps, Obama acknowledged the fact that rights are endowed by the Creator and cannot be legitimately removed by governments, as the Founding Fathers observed in the Declaration of Independence. However, he said it even while openly detailing assorted unconstitutional plots to infringe on Americans’ unalienable right to keep and bear arms, dismissing fears of tyrannical government and attacking the sincerity of his political opponents. He also implied that the Second Amendment was responsible for violations of other rights, such as the right to life.
The president claimed, falsely according to recent polls, that most of the public supports his controversial schemes — not that majority opinion would justify unconstitutional violations of the people’s rights. Acknowledging that much of his assault on gun rights would be hard to get through Congress, however, Obama vowed to use “whatever weight this office holds” to ram it through anyway — perhaps ObamaCare style, where Democrat lawmakers simply ignored the Constitution and defied public opinion.
While his own daughters have heavily armed, taxpayer-funded Secret Service protection, Obama urged the American people to join his crusade to further restrict the Second Amendment for civilians under the guise of protecting children. The president and anti-gun politicians in Washington, of course, will continue to be protected by heavily armed forces carrying large-capacity magazines and fully automatic weapons that are already virtually impossible to get for average citizens.
The people, however, must make do with less firepower, according to Obama. A propaganda pamphlet outlining the president’s plan posted on the White House website insists that it is all “to protect our children” — assuming, of course, that they are already born and do not live in one of the myriad countries suffering from his non-stop mass-murdering drone attacks.
“This is our first task as a society — keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change,” Obama claimed as the cameras moved between children and parents standing in the room, relying on a popular but deceptive argument historically exploited by those pushing dangerous or unpopular ideas — protecting kids. “I will put everything I’ve got into this … but the only way we can change is if the American people demand it.”
At the top of the president’s list is making sure that Americans who wish to buy or sell firearms — even in private sales at gun shows or transfers among friends — must jump through hoops and navigate D.C. red tape to perform full federal background checks. While criminals almost always buy their guns on the black market anyway, Obama’s plan says mandating universal background checks is “the single most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence.”
Aside from the inherent problems with asking permission to exercise an unalienable right and the bureaucratic nightmare such a scheme would create — not to mention the costs and the risk of criminalizing otherwise innocent people — critics worry that the federal government will use the data to keep an unlawful firearm registry that would eventually be used for confiscation. Gun shows, as they exist today, would essentially become history. Even if Congress refuses to adopt the scheme, Obama is ordering the ATF to prod people into doing it anyway.
Using “executive orders,” the president is also beefing up the background-check system, ordering state governments to turn over more information on citizens to be placed in a central database. Private healthcare records, for example, which many people assumed were protected by law, will be among the data vacuumed up by the federal government under Obama’s plan. Also included in the “executive action” package are improved “incentives” to state governments in an effort to gather more information about citizens for federal databases.
Incredibly, disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder, who was caught trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels under “Fast and Furious,” will be charged with reviewing rules purporting to determine which Americans may own guns. The Justice Department chief, of course, was caught on video in 1995 proposing a tax-funded campaign to, in his words, “brainwash” the American people against guns. Official e-mails from Fast and Furious also revealed that bloodshed resulting from the administration’s gun-running plot, which was uncovered thanks to brave whistleblowers, would be used to advance more infringements on gun rights.
Obama’s plan would also seek to ban what he calls “military-style assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines,” propaganda terms used by the president and other anti-gun zealots to demonize popular semi-automatic weapons and standard-capacity magazines owned by millions of law-abiding Americans. The scheme would criminalize possession or transfer of armor-piercing ammunition for civilians, too, so if criminals wear bullet proof vests, they will have little to fear from their prey — even if the victims are armed. Sen. Diane Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) ban legislation would unconstitutionally require national gun registration complete with fingerprints, historically a precursor to confiscation.
The administration is demanding that Congress appropriate $4 billion for police as well, noting that economic problems have resulted in decreased funding at the state and local level. The proposal would essentially confiscate more money from taxpayers or borrow the funds from others, route it through Washington, then hand it back out with strings attached to local law enforcement, which is supposed to be independent of the federal government and accountable to the community — not Obama. State and local law enforcement have been some of the fiercest centers of resistance to federal attacks on gun rights. More federal funding for schools is also being sought to deal with “gun violence.”
In all, the president offered a total of 23 “executive orders” dealing with everything from “mental health” to mandating more tax-funded “research” on “gun violence.” One of the orders that has received quite a bit of media attention declares that the deeply unpopular ObamaCare statute allows doctors to interrogate their patients about whether or not they have guns at home — and to report their findings to the government despite doctor-patient confidentiality.
Predictably, much of the slavishly pro-Obama establishment media, already widely mistrusted among Americans in part because of the shameless attacks on gun rights masquerading as “news,” jumped aboard the presidential anti-gun bandwagon. Over the last month, much of the press has been using emotional appeals and outright falsehoods to push gun control, but activists say the establishment talking heads are mostly talking to themselves and that politicians who support further infringements will suffer the consequences at the ballot box.
Billionaire George Soros-funded groups like MoveOn.org are also in full attack mode, deploying paid “community organizers” and propaganda blitzes to help push Obama’s radical anti-gun agenda. “We have to go big,” the far-left outfit said in an e-mail to supporters celebrating “the most aggressive and expansive national gun-control agenda in generations.” The administration has already vowed to try to get as much “public pressure” behind its agenda as possible while fracturing the opposition, so analysts say this is likely just the beginning of that anti-liberty assault.
Gun rights activists, however, are standing firm, saying Congress must reject any and all gun control. Groups like the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and others are all united against the proposed schemes, and lawmakers are already considering action to block the lawless executive orders. Second Amendment advocates and opponents both argue that all of the pieces of the agenda are simply part of an incremental attack on gun rights eventually aiming to fully disarm all Americans.
“This is a game the anti-gun zealots have played before: They threaten to kill the Second Amendment, and then negotiate their way back to ‘merely’ eviscerating it,” Gun Owners of America said in an e-mail to supporters asking them to contact their elected officials. “The only way that America’s gun owners are going to have peace over the next decade is to stop all gun control — as we did after Columbine — and then defeat compromising legislators running for reelection in 2014.”
While prospects for passage in Congress at the moment appear slim, according to analysts, supporters of the Second Amendment are urging concerned citizens to flood their representatives with calls and letters demanding that they obey their oath of office. Obama has big plans and big money to ram his agenda down the American people’s throats, so if the right to keep and bear arms is to survive, activists say the time to get involved is now.
Photo of President Barack Obama signing gun-control executive orders: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected].
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