If you’re counting the days until President Barack Obama leaves the White House so that the next American president can undo all of his unilateral anti-gun executive orders, you could have a rude awakening after his successor takes office.
And if you think President Obama is finished waging his campaign to “transform” America—in part by gutting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as we know it—you could be in for an unpleasant surprise much sooner than that. “My goal is to position the Justice Department where it will carry on in all of these issues long after myself and my team have moved on.” – U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch
On the morning of January 12, before Obama’s last State of the Union address, reporters asked whether the president was finished with his habit of going around Congress by issuing executive orders. Despite Obama issuance just weeks ago of an executive order that imposed gun control by fiat without even a vote by Congress, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough made it clear to reporters that the president was far from finished.
“We’ll do audacious executive action over the course of the rest of the year, I’m confident of that,” McDonough said.
Indeed, now that President Obama has faced his last election, with his phone, his pen and his executive orders, he has everything to gain and nothing to lose. As the National Review reported, McDonough said the main question the president plans to ask himself with regard to more executive orders is, “Why not?”
And sure enough, the congressional newspaper The Hill has reported that the White House is “already scrambling to put in place dozens of executive orders and regulations,” and quoted an unnamed administration official who said President Obama is “not going to hesitate to act when Congress fails to do so.”
What that will mean for your right to keep and bear arms in defense of yourself and your family remains to be seen. But one fact is clear: President Obama and his administration want the changes he’s decreed to be permanent—immune from action by any future Congress or American president, and institutionalized as part of established law.
“We do want to make sure that the executive actions we undertake are not left hanging out there, subject to Congress undoing them,” McDonough said.
In that, President Obama has the support of his administration from top to bottom.
As Attorney General Loretta Lynch told New York magazine in late December, “My goal is to position the Justice Department where it will carry on in all of these issues long after myself and my team have moved on.” President Obama’s domestic policy adviser Cecilia Muñoz said her job is “to make sure we build this really into the DNA across the federal bureaucracy ... to make sure that when political appointees like me are no longer here this is built into what those agencies do and think about every day.”
Last April, President Obama’s top domestic adviser, Cecilia Muñoz, said she was also working to institutionalize Obama’s policies, not just on gun control but also illegal immigration.
Muñoz said her job was “to make sure we build this really into the DNA across the federal bureaucracy, at a leadership level, but much more importantly to make sure that when political appointees like me are no longer here this is built into what those agencies do and think about every day.”
Make no mistake: Changing the political culture of Washington isn’t as “easy” as winning an election and replacing one commander-in-chief with another. It’s more like trying to dig up, root out and eradicate poison ivy or bamboo by hand.
Because it’s not just President Obama who’s had seven years to institutionalize his anti-gun agenda through executive orders. It’s the dozens of cabinet officials he’s appointed ... and the hundreds of undersecretaries and anonymous minions they’ve hired ... and the empires and fiefdoms each of them has erected. Moreover, the millions of words of federal regulations that army of regulators and bureaucrats has written will live on indefinitely until some right-minded leader finally gets to them with pickaxe, shovel and hoe.
Even that is only after we see a pro-gun leader move into the White House. And that is far from assured.
For her part, Hillary Clinton has vowed that if Congress doesn’t do her bidding, she’ll use the same kind of unilateral executive orders that President Obama has used to attack your Second Amendment rights.
But for all the president’s audacity, you can bet Hillary Clinton will make him look like an amateur in doing so.
What might that mean?
For Hillary Clinton, clearly no gun-ban scheme is too extreme, including national bans and forced confiscation of firearms from law-abiding people—a policy Australia imposed 20 years ago, and that Clinton said was “an example worth looking at.”
What can you do?
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Use Your Power!
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Make sure every gun owner you know and every American who cares about freedom is registered to vote. Then get informed, get involved and do your part by joining the NRA. Together we can fight back to root out and eliminate the institutionalized culture of gun control in Washington—but we need your help. To find out how to join NRA before the membership price increases,
click here.
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