In a little noted portion of President Obama’s statement on the failure of his gun bill Wednesday, Sandy Hook father Mark Barden made a startling admission: The proposed background check system changes would not have saved any lives during the massacre.
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In the statement, Barden said that “expanded background checks wouldn’t have saved our loved ones, but we still came to support the bipartisan proposal from two senators…” and claimed that 90 percent of Americans support it. Barden undoubtedly was handed that statistic by White House speechwriters. President Obama frequently used it during his campaign for gun control.
The claim is dubious, as only four percent of Americans rate gun control as a high priority, and millions of Americans are likely under the impression that we have no gun-purchasing background-check system at all. We can thank the media, which consistently reports error as fact when it comes to guns, and politicians who are only too happy to play and prey on low-information voters. President Obama has further muddied the waters by claiming that 40% of all gun purchases occur outside the background check system, a statistic that has been disproved time and again. The actual number is probably closer to 8%. The background-check system is reported to have stopped the Newtown killer from buying guns, so he stole them from his mother, whom he murdered. Criminals have a way of getting around laws.
My purpose here is not to harry Mr. Barden, who lost his son Daniel to a madman on December 14. The point of this post is to point out, again, that even the backers of the gun bill are aware that it would not have stopped the very crime that started the latest gun-control effort. The larger point is to point out how shameless and dishonest President Obama has been and continues to be throughout his gun-control campaign. There are Sandy Hook parents who disagree with the president’s gun-control push. He never acknowledges that they exist, and we seldom hear from them in the media.
“If it only saves one life,” the president says, then we must do what he tells us is “common sense” and pass a law that his own supporters admit would have changed nothing on that awful day.
How is it “common sense” to support a senseless law? How is it “common sense” to continue using statistics that have been proven to be false? How can the president who says we must change the law “if it only saves one life” then have no comment at all on a series of ghastly crimes — against children — that took place across 17 years under the guise of partial-birth abortion, a policy that Barack Obama supports and defends? If it only saves one life, should not that horrific practice be banned in America forever? Banning partial-birth abortion could save thousands, maybe millions.
Barack Obama has nothing to say in answer to that question. Nothing at all. He cannot even muster an artful dodge.
As a father, I can scarcely imagine what Mr. Barden and the other Sandy Hook parents are suffering. To have your child ripped from this world so violently and tragically, and so close to Christmas, must have torn out some part of their souls. This crime will linger with them forever. They are ordinary parents, moms and dads, shocked and grieving and shaken to the foundations of who they are.
Anytime the president of the United States calls on your service, it is a powerful call, among the most powerful calls to service in the world. Obama’s call came when these parents were at their most vulnerable. It has been scarcely four months since they lost their beautiful children. They are still hurting deeply, and grieving.
During the statement that followed Mr. Barden’s introduction, Obama lectured and lied and manipulated. He ranted, calling the vote “shameful.” He used grieving parents as props and danced on the graves of their children to push a policy he has always wanted to push. He pouted and acted like a spoiled child himself.
Obama is exploiting the Sandy Hook parents and their grief, while at the same time he hopes we all forget the children murdered in Kermit Gosnell’s abattoir, under a policy that he is on the record supporting. His fight against protecting infants is one of the few times during his tenure in the Illinois Senate that he did not balk and vote “present.” Allowing infants born alive to be murdered, to have their spinal cords slashed, must be a policy he is comfortable supporting in public.
Barack Obama has no shame. None. He never truly cared about the parents or children of Sandy Hook any more than he cared about the children beheaded and dismembered and stored in jars by Dr. Gosnell. The push for laws that would not have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre has been nothing more than a raw push for power by a callous, heartless demagogue. Barack Obama’s defeat Wednesday was the republic’s victory.
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