Obama Goes After Guns Again

From the AP:

Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations.

Would not, could not... big difference there. 

Four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled Obama's intent to show he hasn't lost sight of a cause he took up after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last year in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

In the words of President Obama - "we won. Move on." But no. Here we go again. But thins while the nation is waiting to see of President Obama is going to decide to strike Syria. Shouldn't he be doing that, instead? I get the feeling he's been waiting months for this moment - a moment when everyone's attention was turned elsewhere. Laying in wait... like a snake.

And what kind of weapons were used to kill the people at Newtown? Handguns - not "assault rifles. There was a rifle found in the trunk of the shooter's car - in the parking lot. But it wasn't used in the shooting. Here we go again with the "assault rifle" nonsense. "Assault rifles" are responsible for only two percent of gun crimes.

One new policy will end a government practice that lets military weapons, sold or donated by the U.S. to allies, be reimported into the U.S. by private entities, where some may end up on the streets. The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.

That's rich. The administration that brought us Fast and Furious is worried about weapons that we sent to other countries ending up on American streets.

And hold on just a minute - why would "surplus" arms be sold (or donated) to other countries and then bought back from them by the military? Wouldn't that mean that they weren't surplus, after all? Sounds a bit like the way money laundering works to me.

The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns.

Wouldn't this require some sort of a database of people within the organization (potentially hundreds of thousands of people, depending on the size of the corporation)? And then wouldn't that database then have a record of the guns owned by those within the corporation? This sounds like a sneaky first step to gun registry to me.

Although Obama and Biden have said the fight is not over, there is scant evidence that there is more support for gun control legislation than there was in April, when efforts died in the Senate amid staunch opposition from the National Rifle Association and most Republican senators.

And the overwhelming majority of American people. And the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution. Let's not forget about those very important things that are against gun control.

"Sooner or later, we are going to get this right," Obama said that day in the White House Rose Garden, with the families of Newtown victims and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — herself a victim of a gunman — at his side. "The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people," the president said at the time.

Let's breathe for a moment and also remember that Representative Giffords was shot with a handgun - not a rifle. And the gun used wasn't surplus or reimported into the United States. It was purchased legally.

These days, Obama mentions gun control with far less regularity than when it appeared the Senate was poised to take action, although Obama did meet Tuesday with 18 city mayors to discuss ways to contain youth violence. And with immigration and pressing fiscal issues dominating Congress' agenda, the prospects for reviving gun legislation appear negligible.

I wonder if Rahm Emanual, the mayor of Chicago, was among those whom the president met with. You know - the gun control Mecca where gun crime and homicides are out of control.