As the old adage says, sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The Obama Administration gives us many examples of why this is true, but there is one issue that Obama has seemingly learned the wisdom of this one: gun control. When he was elected with large, seemingly unstoppable majorities in both houses of the Legislature, everyone thought that hard gun control was inevitible. Instead, the Administration and Legislature both remained mute on the issue. This has traditional Leftists fuming:
There are some issues Democratic Presidents can’t seem to win, and gun control is one of them. As a legislator, Barack Obama backed tighter gun laws; as a presidential candidate, he pledged restraint. “I’m not going to take away your guns,” he said at a Pennsylvania glass factory in September 2008. He hasn’t. Last year the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, citing “extraordinary silence and passivity,” graded Obama an F on gun control.
During his tenure, the President has also expanded gun rights by signing laws that allow the possession of firearms in national parks and on Amtrak. And yet, he can’t get a nod from the National Rifle Association because those measures were tucked into broader bills Obama liked. “He has a failing record when it comes to gun rights, and that’s what our members and gun owners and hunters across the country know,” says NRA public-affairs director Andrew Arulanandam. “I also think they don’t trust him.”
If Obama has disappointed both sides so far, the tragedy in Tucson provides a possible pivot point. Senior White House aides have said the President will address the gun issue sometime soon, though they’ve declined to offer specifics on the timing and format. Equally unclear is what Obama wants to say — or what he thinks political considerations will permit him to say. Riled by Obama’s decision to duck the issue in his State of the Union address, gun-control advocates are urging aggression. “The President should stand up [on guns],” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “It’s one of the issues he can build a legacy on.”
Yes, I had begun to hope that he could build a bipartisan legacy of rolling back some of the unconstitutional laws that are already on the books. That would appear to be on hold after the Tucson shooting. This is a shame, because all the Tucson shooting proved is that it is impossible to stop a mad or evil man from doing mad and evil acts. Fortunately, Ms.Giffords appears to be recovering well. Unfortunately, six people lost their lives, including a little girl.
None of this is any reason to abridge the fundamental, essential liberties of 300 million law-abiding Americans. It is disgusting how the gun controllers wait for something to happen like vultures, so they can sweep in and try and pass on a wave of emotion laws that cannot withstand the sober scrutiny and reflection of other, less emotional times.
So far, though, Obama has remained silent. I think this is just as well. The Left like to quote “polls” that say the majority of Americans support gun control, but I frankly don’t believe them. The article from Time I quoted does this with no attribution of the poll, no source, no links to methadology, nothing. I have evidence that 99% of all unsourced polls are pure bullshit, and this is an example of this. If the Democrats really believed these “polls”, they would have driven hard and fast on the gun control issue in 2009. They did not. Now they are going to try and convince some RINOs and “moderate” Republicans to sign on to their ill-advised and possibly unconstitutional laws to look bipartisan. I am hoping that Obama continues to use the wisdom of silence on this issue. It looks Presidential on him. I am hoping that the RINO/moderates do so as well, and the Republicans remember that polls are just wind; the voters have made themselves clear on this issue time and time again. They should remember that silence is golden, and if they want some real bipartisan reforms, they could look at removing the NFA restrictions on short-barreled rifles and, of course, silencers.
Tags: gun control, Obama Administratio, Silencers
