President Obama appears to be close to fulfilling his threat to impose gun control against the will of Congress and the American people. Though Congress has twice refused to impose the gun control restrictions Obama has demanded, and contemporary polls show that a majority of Americans oppose stricter gun control laws, NBC News reports, “Obama’s advisers are finalizing a proposal that would expand background checks on gun sales without congressional approval.” The proposal is expected to be made public in January.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Virginia’s Democrat Attorney General, Mark Herring, intends to stop recognizing the carry permits of 25 states—Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Herring’s action, bypassing Virginia’s legislature, was likely inspired by the Obama Administration’s recent overtures to state governors, along with Michael Bloomberg’s focus on gun control efforts at the state level and his desire for revenge for the stinging defeat he suffered in his recent attempt to buy control of the state Senate for Virginia’s anti-gun governor, former Clinton campaign operative Terry McAuliffe (D).
Obama intends to bypass Congress because the U.S. Senate, in April 2013 and again this month, rejected legislation to expand background checks, and the House of Representatives refused to even take such legislation under consideration. Further causing Obama to bitterly cling to his gun control agenda, its other key elements—banning rifles like the AR-15 along with ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and prohibiting the purchase of firearms by anyone on the FBI’s secret “known or suspected terrorist” watch list without due process of law—have suffered the same fate.
While Obama is expected to assert a new interpretation of federal law to prohibit some or all sales of personally-owned firearms without a federal license, a subject with a sordid history dating back to 1968, Roll Call reports that the president may also be looking for a way to unilaterally prohibit the purchase of firearms by people on the watch list, something opposed even by the ACLU and the Los Angeles Times. Ironically, and one might say, predictably, Obama and other gun control supporters have been trying to use the terrorist attack in San Bernardino earlier this month as the excuse for their watch list scheme, despite the apparent fact that neither of the jihadists who committed that attack were on the list.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of San Bernardino, gun control supporters have tried to divert attention away from the failure of California’s strict “assault weapon” ban and other gun control restrictions to prevent the crime, and instead build a case for new restrictions on ammunition sales. One such restriction, concocted by state legislators from New York City, shows how much antipathy today’s gun control supporters have for all things associated with gun ownership, particularly the use of guns for self-defense. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports that legislation will soon be introduced in New York to prohibit a person from buying more than twice the number of rounds of ammunition that can be loaded into a lawfully-owned firearm, within a 90-day period. For example, a person who owns a five-shot revolver would be allowed to buy only 10 rounds every 90 days.
It may be a long time before scientists discover a cure for the kind of anti-gun madness that afflicts politicians in New York City. Fortunately, however, a cure for the strain of the condition afflicting Obama, Bloomberg and their cohorts at the federal and state level is readily available. As former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas) describes it, in the context of things other than gun control, erasing the damage that Obama has done, or will do before he leaves office in a little over a year, is a simple matter. And the same would be true for similar problems occurring at the state level of government.
“Simple” is not the same thing as “easy,” however. What we have to do is simple: get the right people elected to the White House, Congress, and state offices in 2016. How easy that will be will depend on the vigor and wisdom with which Americans exercise their political rights from now through Election Day 2016.
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