President Obama rolled out a new slate of executive orders designed to prevent criminals from getting guns and made an emotional appeal for even more to be done, but a leading defender of the second amendment says Obama’s actions are a dishonest, unconstitutional overreach.
On Tuesday, Obama unveiled new executive orders to an enthusiastic response from supporters in the East Room of the White House. Obama called for more money to be spent on developing smart guns that only work when they recognize a specific fingerprint. He also wants more done to stop mentally ill people from getting guns. However, the order getting the most attention is Obama’s effort to greatly loosen the definition of a gun seller.
The president argues more people should have to be licensed to sell guns and then more gun buyers would go through background checks.
“I’m not opposed to background checks. My problem is the devil is in the details and he’s not really doing background checks. What he’s doing is bait-and-switch. He says background check, but what he really does it create a national registration system. He wants to create a database of every gun owner in the United States that the federal government has access and control of. That’s what the problem is,” said Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb.
“Gun owners at this point have no trust in this president,” added Gottlieb.
On top of that, Gottlieb says this change wouldn’t have stopped a single mass shooting we’ve seen in recent years.
“All the cases he cited where guns were misused, those people went through background checks and bought the guns from licensed dealers who are licensed to sell those guns and conduct the background checks. Obama is being disingenuous in nearly everything he said. The impact is going to be nil,” said Gottlieb.
Not only that, Gottlieb says it’s odd for the Obama administration to plead for more background checks when its existing approach to the issue has been lackadaisical.
“When criminals go to a gun store now and flunk the background check and committed a felony in lying on the form, this administration has the worst record of any modern president in prosecuting those people,” said Gottlieb. “Obama wants to get rid of people’s guns. He doesn’t want to get rid of criminals.”
Gottlieb is also worried about Obama’s action that could lead to doctors getting involved with who should be able to own a gun.
“His part of the mental health (action), having doctors report people to the FBI to put them in the database to disqualify them from owning a firearm without any due process is a scary proposal here. Once you’re in that database, there’s no way to get your name out of that database. That’s an infringement on second amendments rights,” said Gottlieb.
In addition to those issues, Gottlieb says Obama has no authority to change the law on his own.
“If a person that is going to sell a gun out of their collection, under Obama’s definition that would make him a dealer and he’d have to get a license to sell the gun. That’s not in his authority. It’s not part of the act that Congress has passed and he’s going to have a hard time defending that in court,” said Gottlieb.
He also thinks Obama won’t be able to find much cooperation for this in Congress.
“I expect Congress to totally rebel against everything Obama’s trying to do here. Obama talks about how he’s going to hire more people to do this and that and the funds for that are in his budget. His budget has to be approved by Congress and those things are not going to be in the final budget approved by Congress,” said Gottlieb.
On Tuesday, Obama said he had great respect for the second amendment and rights of Americans to exercise their freedoms, but he he said other rights matter too, like the freedom to worship for Christians killed in Charleston, Jews in Kansas City, Muslims in North Carolina and Sikhs in Wisconsin.
In addition to pointing out Obama’s actions would not have stopped those killings, Gottlieb says if Obama was serious about stopping gun violence he would sue cities like Chicago and Washington for laws that prevent people from defending themselves due to strict gun control. He also pointed out the major urban areas wracked with firearm fatalities are cities that have been under Democratic control for decades.
The moment that got Obama the most attention is when he wiped away tears while remembering the young victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary atrocity in 2012. While Obama’s emotion is garnering rave reviews in the mainstream media, Gottlieb is unimpressed.
“That’s all he has because the facts are not on his side. He can’t say that anything he’s proposing would have stopped these criminals and mass murderers from getting their guns. He can only rely on emotion because he can’t rely on any facts or statistics,” said Gottlieb, who branded Obama’s presentation Tuesday as “phony baloney rhetoric.”
