Obama’s Gun Control: Separating Fact from Fiction

By: Laura Meyers

If men can’t have a say in abortion rights and whites don’t have experience enough to speak on race relations, then President Obama really needs to stop issuing executive orders on gun control, because his actions weep (literally) with ignorance to current law and gun culture.

Fiction: “Muh gun show loophole! Muh internet purchases loophole!”

Fact: You can order a gun online without a background check. But you can’t be shipped a gun without a background check. It is first shipped to a Federal Firearms License (FFL)-holding dealer, who conducts a background check on you, then ships the gun to you if you’re cleared. Yes, even on websites like Facebook. And yes, you are background checked at gun shows. The good ‘ol boys at gun shows don’t want to break the law, and those that sell guns that do break the law and disregard the FFL requirement are pounced on by ATF. And law-abiding gun owners hate the ATF more than they hate Obama.

And yes, there is this thing called the “deep web/dark web/TOR,” and you can buy all kinds of illegal things there. So, the idea that any law would apply in a place that is outside the law invalidates itself.

Fiction: Increasing the time of availability to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the addition of 230 FBI employees will reduce violent crime.

Fact: The NICS system is already accessible for 17 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays (except for Christmas) via a toll-free telephone number or electronically on the Internet. So, adding 7 more available hours to contact the system and adding 230 more FBI employees to help do so (while billing taxpayers for both of these new moves, mind you), will not decrease gun crime; because either way, you cannot purchase a firearm legally without a background check (see previous fact). The NICS system could be open for 2 hours a day, and no one could be denied or granted the transaction of a gun purchase with the proper go-ahead. 230 more FBI employees is just an expensive, redundant measure propelled by emotion.

Fiction: More guns, legal or illegal, increase violent crime.

Fact: In the past 20 years 22 states have loosened concealed carry laws by becoming shall-issue states, 6 states have stopped requiring permits for concealed carry altogether, the national “assault weapon” ban of 1994 expired, and the number of firearms in circulation in the United States has doubled. There are more guns in the United States than there are people. And guess what? The violent crime rate has decreased by 50 percent. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, “progressives.”

Fiction: President Obama’s new executive orders would have prevented last year’s mass shootings.

Fact (part 1): Well, to start, there were 4 mass shootings in 2015 (Charleston, Chattanooga, Rosebur, and San Bernardino) in which gunmen killed at least four people in a public place, excluding gang-related violence. To note, one could easily argue that San Bernardino was rather an act of terrorism. Which would then leave us with 3 mass shootings by that definition.

The 200-300+ mass shooting statistics that you will see floating in the internet thanks to a source titled “Mass Shooting Tracker”- defines a mass shooting as any incident, anywhere, in which at least four people are shot, but not necessarily killed.

An article by the LA Times is sure to point out that “under this definition, Connecticut’s 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which 26 students and staff members were killed, would hypothetically count the same as a shooting in which four people are shot and wounded in a personal dispute at a house party, even if the injured victims were not the intended targets.”

Fact (part 2): All 4 of the previously named mass shootings were committed with weapons that were purchased legally through a licensed dealer. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeed Malik, the husband and wife pair from San Bernardino that committed the largest act of terrorism against the United States since 9/11, did not buy the guns legally; but obtained them from their neighbor, who bought them legally from a gun store in California. This transaction happened in the state with arguably the toughest gun laws next to the state of Illinois. Nothing President Obama just issued would have prevented this from happening. The neighbor is in jail, but only after unarmed, innocent people died.

Dylann Roof should have been barred from buying a gun because he had previously been charged with a misdemeanor for possessing Suboxone, a prescription drug frequently sold in illegal street transactions (that laws somehow didn’t prevent), admitted to possessing drugs soon thereafter and was then convicted as a felon; but the F.B.I. examiner conducting the required background check failed to obtain the police report from the February incident. Because the public sector is so efficient.

I want to be funny and make a joke, but just like President Obama, I’m sad. It’s sad politics have to disarm the American public from the truth, because after the acceptance of truth a life is saved. Until we can accept what is true, more lives will be lost. And that is something to cry about.