United Liberty

After a tragedy, there are things that happen.  Friends and families of the deceased try to come to terms with the event, journalists try to learn what they can about the event and the people affected by it, and if the tragedy involved a madman with a gun then a politician will scream for gun control.

This time, we have none other than President Obama calling for the gun control:

“A lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals,” Mr. Obama said at the annual National Urban League convention in New Orleans. “They belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities.”

…

“Every day, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater,” Mr. Obama said. “For every Columbine or Virginia Tech,there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago or Atlanta, here in New Orleans. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns.”

I guess he thinks he can get it passed now?  After all, four years ago he said he wouldn’t try to pass gun control legislation because he didn’t figure he had the votes.  Now, he has lost control of one chamber of Congress, with a lot of politicians still battling to keep their seats.  Gun control is usually a loser issue for Democrats.

However, Obama clearly believes that the Aurora massacre will swing things his way.  He’s using the word “gun owners” to convey the idea that the very people who will be regulated share his belief that an “AK-47” belongs in a soldier’s hands.  Well, that may be true in a few places, but I haven’t met too many of those gun owners.

Most gun owners I’ve encountered are also pro-Second Amendment supporters.  Owning a gun doesn’t mean one necessarily supports the idea that an individual has an inalienable right to own firearms without fear of government interference.  However, that’s what the Second Amendment says.

However, Obama is using the tragedy in Colorado as an excuse to try and grab hold of an issue that is usually a loser for the Dems and make it a winner by trying to paint the pro-2A crowd as unreasonable.

But he said those steps have not been effective enough, and blamed “opposition in Congress” for preventing more restrictive gun laws.

“I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms,” Mr. Obama said. “But I also believe that the majority of gun owners would agree that we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons, that we should check someone’s criminal record before they can [purchase a gun], that a mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. These steps shouldn’t be controversial, they should be common sense. So I’m going to continue to work with members of both parties and with religious groups and with civic organizations to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction. Not just of gun violence, but violence at every level.”

Once again, we hear words like “common sense” when talking about potential gun regulations.  However, what Obama has apparently missed is that James Holmes had only a traffic ticket as far as legal troubles and thus far appears to have had no reason to have been mentally adjudicated as being unfit for owning a firearm.

In short, nothing Obama is talking about would have prevented Aurora.  However, before he takes this as a challenge, one must also remember that madmen who want to make a name for themselves generally find a way.  Without a gun, Holmes would have tried something else, possibly with more horrific results.