B-Man Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Obama on Gun Control: 'This Is Not About Politics' ...Unless You Disagree With Me byJacob Sullum This evening in Hartford, Connecticut, President Obama continued to argue that anyone who opposes his "common-sense gun safety reforms" is doing so only for the crassest political reasons. "There is only one thing that can stand in the way of change," he declared, "and that's politics in Washington." His motives, by contrast, are completely pure: This is not about me. This is not about politics. This is about doing the right thing for all the families that are here that have been torn apart by gun violence. It’s about them and all the families going forward, so we can prevent this from happening again....Every once in a while, we set politics aside, and we just do what’s right. Who could possibly disagree? In Obama's telling, only "powerful interests that are very good at confusing the subject, that are good at amplifying conflict and extremes, that are good at drowning out rational debate, good at ginning up irrational fears." That's pretty rich, coming from a man who claims that massacres like the one that took 26 lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December have become "routine," who falsely asserts that the man responsible for those murders used a "fully automatic weapon," and who in response to that horrible event pushes policies that could not possibly have prevented it, while citing the grief and outrage it generated as if they were arguments for the same gun control policies he has supported all along. The choice for members of Congress, Obama says, is simple: "What’s more important to you—our children, or an A grade from the gun lobby?" Evidently this is what Obama, who emphasizes that "we have to be able to put ourselves in the other person's shoes," considers an exercise in sympathetic imagination. http://reason.com/blog/2013/04/08/obama-on-gun-control-this-is-not-about-p . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDBillzFan Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 I'm a little confused. Didn't Barry already push 23 gun control laws through executive order? Is he saying he didn't do enough? Is he saying his executive orders were wrong? Don't work? Mean nothing? Carry no weight? Shoot blanks? Maybe he should just call Harry Reid to push things along. Oh, wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 I'm a little confused. Didn't Barry already push 23 gun control laws through executive order? Is he saying he didn't do enough? Is he saying his executive orders were wrong? Don't work? Mean nothing? Carry no weight? Shoot blanks? Maybe he should just call Harry Reid to push things along. Oh, wait. Executive Orders don't demonize people effectively enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Miner Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 So which of his proposed gun control laws will keep a !@#$ed up kid from killing his mother, and then using her handguns to invade a school and kill children? Flash suppressors? Mag size? Background checks? Hey son, you're not allowed to kill your mom, you didn't pass the background check. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDBillzFan Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 So which of his proposed gun control laws will keep a !@#$ed up kid from killing his mother, and then using her handguns to invade a school and kill children? Flash suppressors? Mag size? Background checks? Hey son, you're not allowed to kill your mom, you didn't pass the background check. The first thing to do is ban fully automatic weapons, since according to our president that's what was used in Newtown. Then we need to ban magazines, since according to one legislator, magazines are ammo and if we ban them now, people will ultimately shoot all the magazines they have and be out of them. And all of this needs to happen before Guam tips over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted April 9, 2013 Author Share Posted April 9, 2013 In his big pitch in Colorado on Wednesday for further gun control, President Obama made an astonishing statement about gun rights advocates’ fears of governmental gun seizures. He said that such worries would just feed “into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.’ The government’s us. These officials are elected by you … I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.” There are two odd angles to this statement. The first is Obama’s overarching theme: government violation of rights is impossible because “the government is us,” and we can’t violate our own rights. Were this true, we could do away with the Constitution altogether. We would also never have to worry about democracies turning tyrannical, or electing tyrannical rulers. In this odd vision, Germany, Italy, and Spain remained liberal democracies throughout the twentieth century, World War II never happened, and Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and Turkey are all thriving centers of freedom. The government is most assuredly not us – at least not all of us – which is why our system of government is designed to protect the rights of minorities while still allowing majorities to legislate without violating those rights. Obama’s defense to charges of incipient tyranny is that tyranny can never happen here. Which, of course, makes it more likely that tyranny will happen here. Truth be told, even Obama does not believe that the “government is us.” If he did, he would never worry about pro-life legislation (he does, and would challenge such legislation in court), heterosexual marriage legislation (he does, and challenges such legislation in court), or anti-Obamacare legislation at the state level (he does, and will likely challenge such legislation in court). Even in Obama’s vision of rights, populism is limited, although his vision of rights is skewed. The second odd angle is Obama’s insistence that the Constitution constrains him. The natural inference seems to be that if it were not for the Constitution, Obama would indeed pursue a federal gun seizure. Like the villain at the end of every Scooby Doo cartoon, Obama’s offhand protest suggests that if it weren’t for those darn kids, he would have gotten away with it. Except that the kids are the founders, and “it” is massive gun control. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/03/Obama-Constitution-constrains Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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