Speaking in front of audience of mainly media and children today, the latter upon whom he has piled trillions of dollars of massive debt, President Barack Obama outlined his 23 proposals to move forward on gun control. Obama’s tone was by turns lecturing and hectoring, as if he is frustrated by the state of politics in Washington. It may have been an act, designed to portray how much he cares about the issue of protecting children. Or he may be frustrated that he cannot simply wave a magic scepter and brush Congress off to the side.
His 23 proposals mostly amount to a to-do list for himself and his bureaucracy. Item 11, for instance: “Appoint an ATF director.” He needed a mass killing to prompt him to do his job? Item 7, which calls for launching a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign. The National Rifle Association has been running such a campaign forever. In fact, Obama even moved the NRA’s way on securing schools, in Item 18, which calls for providing incentives for schools to hire school resource officers. Obama has cut the funding for such officers for the past couple of years now. But it’s nice to see him stop antagonizing the NRA long enough to recognize when they have a good idea, even if he fails to credit them for it.
Some of his proposals run afoul of medical privacy laws. Item 16 tries to get around those laws, “Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.” It doesn’t command them to, either. As one tweeter reacted, it’s fine if my doctor asks me about any firearm she may be thinking about buying, and I’ll be happy to tell her what I think about that firearm. The items I may or may not own is none of her business, though.
Item 8 gives his new behemoth bureaucracy something to do: “Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).” Empowering bureaucrats is always dangerous. It would have made no difference at all in the Sandy Hook massacre. None.
Item 13 is devoid of content: “Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.” Ok. Details? Just, make it so?
Some proposals will run into opposition in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle and in the medical field. If he wants a renewed assault weapons ban, he will have to fight some in his own party on that. If he really wants mental health care providers to report on their patients, there will have to be some clear guidelines or they will run the risk of lawsuits, among other side effects.
The entire list can be summed up in Item 23: “Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.”
All this drama, and that’s what Obama and Biden come up with? A national beer summit on guns?
The main things we learned from Obama’s gun announcement today is that he is playing a weak hand and he knows it, he has little ability to negotiate with anyone in either party, and that he is frustrated. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, the Constitution was expressly written to frustrate people like Barack Obama.
Well, as it happens, that’s all the Constitutional authority any executive order can have. The president is not allowed to originate legislation; his orders pertain only to his authority over the executive branch.
Indeed, that Obama confined himself so strictly to Constitutionally acceptable EOs in this case suggests that he knows the tenor of the country is against him on gun control — and that for a change, he’s disinclined to try to ram it down our throats. He might have more luck strong-arming state governments, some of which are unfettered by their own constitutions and desperate for more federal handouts, into implementing further anti-gun legislation, but even there, his successes are likely to be confined to deep-blue states already deeply sunk in the anti-gun mire.
Looks like he doesn’t want to be on the short list of impeached presidents. This guy’s ego cannot be underestimated.
He doesn’t have to be worried about being impeached over shenanigans with the debt ceiling because his good bud John Boehner has his back on that one.
Me Thinks this is a “Wait for the other shoe to drop” type of response. Wonder when/where the next Black Ops will be staged???
Please take your conspiracy theories somewhere else. Claiming that this or any other terrorist act is a black ops operation is the fastest way to be written off as a nut and to have your opinions disregarded. Sandy Hook did happen. Is the administration famous for never letting a crisis go to waste using this event to overreach, you betcha – it is what they do. No conspiracy needed.
Fast and Furious?
Annon please Google the newtown shooting and see that even NBC admitted that the AR15 was still in the car and was not used. Now thats not saying it didn’t happen just like Libya was about a movie. It’s not about what happened with this admin. they just can be honest enough to tell us all the world is really round !!
Here’s a site with NBC video, about 1.5 minutes long. They say two federal officials told them there were 4 handguns in the school and only handguns.
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/01/30208-nbc-admits-no-assault-rifle-used-in-newtown-shooting/
But does that change anything? Any honest political analyst knew that Obama would attack the Second Amendment if re-relected. This also doesn’t provide any evidence that Newtown was a government conspiracy, even though its timing is perfect for starting four whole years of attacking our civil and natural rights.
So after weeks of panelling, the White House came up with a list of executive actions they wanted the whole time anyway and could have taken months ago, but didn’t.
Their legislative proposals, seen below are nothing more than all the wishlist items that have come up over the last 20 years. There’s talk about ‘armor piercing’ ammunition in there. Same “enhanced” ‘assault weapon’ ban that has floated around since 1995, with the nice lie that the CT shooter’s gun would have been covered under the 2 feature 1994 ban. Some talk about allowing the ATF to block importation of 50+ year old military surplus (C&R) under the BS justification that some can be converted into machine guns.
http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-gun-control-proposal-obama-executive-orders-2013-1
…under a tree. G-R-A-V-E STANDING.
@piersmorgan:
I’m being accused of ‘standing on the graves of dead Sandy Hook children’ – if that’s what it takes to get action, so be it.
Obama was supposed to have been standing on the graves of his Fast and Furious victims today. The props on the set had to be replaced after he got busted. Hispanics out, children and doctors in.
King Barack Hussein has to appoint a director of ATF, but only when inspired by the little kids on stage with him?
What a weakling.
The sooner he can be downgraded into lame duck status, the better. Political blocking and tackling are in order from the House.
Make that Ayahtollah Barack etc.
– is redundant.
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
In the aftermath of Operation Fast & Furious, it’s pretty interesting that he could propose #9 and #10 with a straight face.
Why should o be frustrated with politics in DC? He caused most of the problems.
BHO is the least competent President since Millard Fillmore – and then some!
At the rate he is going his pals among the Democrats in Congress can look forward to a lengthy break from stalking the lives of normal Americans after 2014 – if impeachment does not come up sooner??
At least Millard Filmore not only did nothing useful but also had the common decency not to pretend to doing anything useful. Not so our current Poseur! In other words, comparing the two would be doing a grave injustice to Mr. Filmore.
This is Obozo’s “austerity plan”; Save the children who can pay down the National Debt.
President Barack Hussein Obama is an ignoramus, posing as doing something about the shootings by an insane man in Newton, Connecticut. Adam Lanza did not buy the guns he used, so the talk about controlling the sale of guns has nothing to do with Adam Lanza’s shooting of school children. If President Obama is really concerned about the shooting of innocent people, why did he allow the activities of Fast and Furious, which led to the death of Brian Terry?
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Obama’s list but, overall, his gesture yesterday seemed pretty lame, in the spirit of…
“Damn, we can’t really bypass Congress on this one and get away with it.”
Lamest of all was for the Centers for Disease Control (!) to “study the best ways to reduce gun violence”.
““[While] year after year, those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it — and Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds,” Obama said in remarks at the White House. “We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.”
Study study & study. Then study some more. Then ignore the study’s outcome if it doesn’t suit your ideological agenda, as Obama ignored the recommendations of his debt reduction panel first term.
As for guns, I think the assumption that any of the federal government’s bureaucratic “geniuses” or agencies has a clue about anything is more than a little flawed.
The dissolution of American culture that progressives have promoted for decades has a lot to do with spawning the unstable minds of young mass murderers.
Also, many of those young men have been prescribed psychotropic drugs/anti-depressants and may have a history of using them sporadically, as did Eric Harris at Columbine taking the drug Luvox.
A near obsessive addiction to violent video games was true for Adam Lanza.
Quentin Tarantino has recently expressed indignation that any unstable teenage mind or young adult might find “inspiration” from the near indescribable violence in his movies.
There. I just saved the CDC a bundle of cash on its “study”.
I’ll send the government a bill.