OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
President Obama keeps preaching about “common sense” new federal laws that will end the senseless slaughter of innocents such as the massacre we saw in an elementary school last year.
He keeps tossing around statistics about how 90 percent of Americans embrace these simple new fixes. Eighty percent of those neanderthal Republicans even agree!
He is talking about “common sense” ideas such as “universal” background checks for all gun purchases, a ban on “high-capacity” gun clips and making illegal again “assault” rifles that are designed for the battlefield.
These ideas are so “common sense” that not a one of them would have saved the life of a single child at Newtown. And for the president and his political operatives to suggest otherwise is not only ignorant and dishonest, but a desecration of the 20 little innocents killed that day by a crazed gunman.
Adam Lanza did not have access to guns because he had skirted background checks. He had access to them because his mother foolishly and recklessly taught him how to use them and allowed him to have access to them. As a parent and a gun owner, she should have known that her son was not stable enough for such recreation.
SPECIAL COVERAGE: Second Amendment & Gun Control
It is too bad she is dead. Were she alive, she could be prosecuted for her reckless disregard for so many innocent lives.
The problem with universal background checks is that it makes it illegal for a neighbor to sell or give a gun to a neighbor. And what about a responsible parent who buys a gun for his daughter or son when they come of the age and maturity to be trusted with such a huge responsibility? Would that be illegal, too, thus stamping out the single most important relationship to responsible gun ownership?
Another favorite “common sense” idea from these people is limiting the size of magazine clips. Okay, so 15-round clips are banned but you can still get a 10-round clip. Does that mean these people favor allowing 10 children to be killed, just not 15? Of course, one 10-round clip in each hand means 20 rounds total. So, President Obama, does that mean you are cool with 20 dead children?
In the case of Adam Lanza, the clip sizes were irrelevant anyway, we have since learned. That is because he switched out ammunition clips repeatedly — often without even using all the rounds in each magazine.
Then there is the most commonly repeated “common sense” idea — also known as a “flat-out lie.”
Despite what these people keep saying, “military-style assault weapons” have been banned in America for decades. Not since the days of Al Capone have fully automatic weapons been legal. And if President Obama and his political henchmen do not understand this, then their rank ignorance should forever silence them in this debate. If they do understand this, then they should be excluded for their willful lying.
These so-called “assault weapons” bans do nothing but prohibit guns based on their cosmetic features. They have nothing to do with the actual functionality of the weapon. Nothing whatsoever.
And if guns are to be banned based solely on their appearance rather than their functionality, then certainly those same guns should be banned in Hollywood for the making of even fictional movies, right? Because if the problem is appearance rather than how the gun functions, the overwhelmingly vast majority of such sightings appear on the big screen — not in some law-abiding guy’s little basement rec room.
The truth is, President Obama and his fellow politicians have no real plan for curbing gun violence. Twenty children were murdered by a psychopath and they smelled blood. And they did what politicians do. They used the poor dead children to push their political agenda.
If they really were seriously committed and they really and truly believed that their “common sense” ideas would have prevented the massacre in Newtown, then why didn’t they run all this right though Congress back during the first two years of his administration when President Obama controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress? These “common sense” laws would have passed with huge Democratic majorities and Mr. Obama could have signed it all right into law.
Well, they didn’t. The reason they didn’t is because President Obama wanted to win re-election and wanted to keep control of Congress. That, apparently, was far more important to them then preventing the massacre of 20 innocent children in Newtown.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com.
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