Just as President Obama is amping up the volume on his gun-control agenda, the American people are telling Gallup they really couldn’t care less.
Today the president will be conferring with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to confirm his opinion that he can issue gun-control regulations by executive order without congressional approval. Later, the president is expected to announce those orders, which are likely to include broadening the number of gun owners who must obtain a Federal Firearms License in order to purchase or sell guns for themselves. He’ll also tell Americans that if a gun is stolen, that fact must be forwarded to the ATF for their records.
On Thursday the president will be hosting a “town hall” meeting with himself and anti-gun CNN commentators to discuss what further actions he might take to advance his anti-Second Amendment agenda.
Gallup just issued its latest poll indicating that 1) most Americans don’t really give two hoots about what the president is doing about the gun “problem” but 2) instead are increasingly concerned about government overreach, which has hit new highs during his administration.
Specifically, concerns about the gun issue that Obama is focusing on comes in at 19th out of 23 issues presented by Gallup to 12,000 American adults over the past 12 months. At no time did gun control ever engage more than seven percent of those respondents, while for most of 2015 the issue engaged just one percent.
Much higher on the list, according to Gallup, is government: specifically government under Obama. In 2007, governmental overreach concerned just seven percent of Americans but climbed steadily as the Obama administration pressed its agenda to “change” America, and now is at 16 percent. Said Gallup: “For the second consecutive year, dissatisfaction with government edged out the economy as the problem more Americans identified as the nation’s top problem in 2015.”
About the so-called “gun issue” Gallup added: “Another issue that briefly spiked as a concern in 2015 was gun control, with mentions rising from near 1% most months to 7% in October and December following mass shootings that dominated the news.” On average, just two percent of those polled listed gun control as a concern during all of 2015.
Obama’s push for gun control, despite extraordinary lack of support by most Americans, is providing welcome grist for the GOP presidential mill, as several of the candidates have said they would immediately reverse any of Obama’s executive orders if they were elected president. Said Marco Rubio, “All these executive orders he’s going to come out with … that are going to undermine our Second Amendment rights — on my first day in office, they’re gone.”
Said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:
Quite frankly, the American people have rejected his agenda by turning both the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, and going from 21 [Democrat] governors when he came into office, to the 31 Republican governors now. Now this president wants to act as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator. [The] fact is, if he wants to make changes [he should] go to Congress and convince Congress that they’re necessary. But this is going to be another illegal executive action which I’m sure will be rejected by the courts … when I become President [they] will be stricken … by executive action I’ll take.
Donald Trump added: “[This is] an assault on the Second Amendment. You know Obama’s going to do an executive order [to] really knock the helll out of it…. He’s going to sign another executive order having to do with the Second Amendment, having to do with guns. I will veto [it]. I will unsign that so fast…”
The president’s continued push for an agenda increasingly rejected by most Americans illustrates just how committed he is to that agenda. All the noise and clatter emanating from the White House and a complicit media over the matter is increasingly falling on deaf ears.
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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