President Obama said this week that if he regrets anything from his tenure in the White House, it’s that he couldn’t do more to deteriorate the Second Amendment.
“If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun safety laws,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
You know, if you’ve been raising your eyebrow about some of the things Donald Trump has said since winning the election, take a moment to celebrate the impending end of the Obama years. Trump may indeed turn out to be a great president. But even if he doesn’t come close to living up to the promise of his candidacy, he’ll be a million times better than this guy. When you get discouraged, just remember what we left behind.
Obama’s failures on gun control were indeed spectacular. Having shown little interest in picking a fight with the Second Amendment up until then, Obama launched his first assault on freedom after the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012. Fresh off an election victory, Obama used the tragedy to put Republicans on defense. Ultimately, his universal background check legislation – a measure that would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the shooting – was rejected.
Embarrassed by this disastrous failure, an angry Obama spent the next four years bringing up the need for better gun control laws every time there was a national tragedy. Even when the country was yearning to hear him talk about Islamic terrorism after San Bernardino and Orlando, Obama consistently went back to his anti-NRA rant. Finally, at the start of this year, he pushed through a set of executive actions that solidified him as a petty liberal motivated as much by “winning” than any genuine concern about gun violence.
If Obama has had any effect on the gun debate at all, it has been to harden the position of his opponents. Oh, and he managed to sell a lot of guns. More than a couple of dealers have sarcastically praised him as being the best firearm salesman in American history, and the numbers bear that out. Good job, Mr. President.
