When award-winning criminologist John Lott first met Barack Obama, when they were both at the University of Chicago in 1996, Lott reports that Obama told him, “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.”
Two weeks ago, in an interview with the BBC, Obama said the biggest frustration of his presidency has been his inability to enact major gun-control legislation. Nevertheless, even though polls show that most Americans oppose further restrictions on their right to keep and bear arms, Obama told the BBC that gun control “is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months [of my administration].”
If you think President Obama’s not out to take your guns ... if you think he’ll back off from his arrogant one-man lifelong war against firearms, the freedom to own them and those who defend that freedom ... or if you think the Republicans who control Congress can stop Obama—then you could wake up tomorrow to find that your gun rights are gone.
It’s already happening to potentially millions of Americans.
Ironically, the Americans who are paying the price are those who are least likely to commit crimes and most likely to need firearms for protection (our elderly), as well as those who are most trained in the safe and effective use of firearms (our service men and women, both veterans and active duty).
Anti-Gun War Of Attrition Against Veterans, The Disabled And Retirees
You’ve seen in the news how Obama refuses to allow active-duty service men and women to be armed for self-defense at military facilities. As a result, U.S. Armed Forces personnel have been disarmed and defenseless against murderous madmen and radical jihadists several times in this country.
From Fort Hood, where Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people and wounded 32 others while screaming “Allahu Akbar” ... to Little Rock, Ark., where jihadist Carlos Bledsoe killed two servicemen at an Army recruiting station ... to the Washington Navy Yard, where madman Aaron Alexis murdered 12 helpless innocents ... to Chattanooga, Tenn., where Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez murdered four Marines and a Navy sailor, too many of America’s best and bravest are being sacrificed to an insane gun-ban ideology that protects no one except the evil.What’s next? Saying that people who fail a math test should lose their right to self-defense?
It’s bad enough that Obama refuses to allow servicemen and women to exercise the same God-given freedoms at work that they exercise at home—freedoms that all Americans enjoy as rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Now he’s doing the same thing to veterans, the disabled and the elderly.
In the biggest gun-grab in American history, Obama is now using his regulatory authority to ban gun ownership for millions of Americans on Social Security disability. Not because they’re insane or unstable. Not because they have any criminal record. And not because they pose any danger to anyone.
No, Obama wants to expand the definition of “prohibited persons” barred from firearm ownership to Social Security recipients who are unable to manage their own finances. (Considering Obama’s own abysmal management of our nation’s financial health, from his runaway deficit spending to his doubling of the national debt: Under his own “financial incompetence” criterion, shouldn’t he be barred from owning a gun?)
It’s no joke: According to the Los Angeles Times, through the Veterans Administration, about 177,000 veterans and survivors of veterans are now barred from firearm ownership simply because they have been assigned a fiduciary to help manage their pension and disability payments.
Now Obama wants to expand that gun ban to Social Security recipients in the same boat. The result, as the Times points out, is that about 4.2 million adults whose monthly payments are managed by “representative payees” will also see their Second Amendment rights disappear.
As gun-rights scholar John Lott asks, “What’s next? Saying that people who can’t drive well or those who fail a math test should lose their right to self-defense?”
A Unified Agenda To Attack Gun Rights From Every Direction
Make no mistake: There’s a method to Obama’s madness. His strategy is simple:
- Steadily expand the list of characteristics that disqualify a person from gun ownership;
- Steadily narrow the list of firearms and ammunition that Americans are allowed to own;
- Ban one bullet here ... ban one gun there ... block gun imports here ... restrict gun accessories there ... chip away at the edges, divide and demonize hunters, sow division among gun owners, then attack them one-by-one from every angle until nothing is left.
To see this pincers strategy at work, just look at how Obama’s BATFE floated a proposal to ban “green tip” M855 ammunition—one of the most popular rounds for AR-15 and other 5.56x45 mm rifles.
The details of this scheme are convoluted and, to many, confusing. But to boil it down, Obama’s BATFE suddenly decided that because M855 ammunition (like virtually all centerfire rifle ammunition) will penetrate bullet-resistant body armor, and because AR-15 handguns are available that will fire this round, therefore the ammunition should be banned under the law that bans armor-piercing handgun bullets. Indeed, BATFE Director B. Todd Jones testified before a U.S. Senate committee in March that he considers not just M855 but also all 5.56 ammo to be a threat to law-enforcement officers.
Never mind that no police officer has ever been killed by an M855 round penetrating body armor. Never mind that handguns have been available that will fire this ammunition for over 30 years. Never mind that M855 ammunition has been lawfully sold and used by millions of Americans for plinking, target shooting and defense for decades. And never mind that the M855 doesn’t penetrate body armor any better, and is actually less powerful, than the ammunition millions of deer hunters use every year.
The whole scheme was built on lies. For a prime example, just look at former Obama campaigner Marjorie Clifton, who falsely claimed on Fox News that M855 ammunition “has been used in every mass shooting we’ve had in the country over past years.”
The NRA mobilized gun owners nationwide to submit comments to ATF to oppose the proposed ban on M855 ammunition, and the Obama administration backed off from the proposal—for now.
But you can bet they’ll be back as soon as they get an opportunity to do so.
“Universal Bullet Ban”?
And whether or not you own an AR-15 or any rifle that fires 5.56 ammunition, the fact is this anti-gun gambit against M855 could be “transformed” into a universal bullet ban.The NRA mobilized gun owners nationwide to submit comments to ATF to oppose the proposed ban on M855 ammunition, and the Obama administration backed off from the proposal—for now.
Consider this: Environmentalists have been trying for years to ban lead ammunition as an “environmental hazard.” The Center for Biological Diversity filed multiple lawsuits in federal court to try to force the EPA to ban lead ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The NRA stopped them—for now—but you can bet they’ll be back with new legal theories to push their ban. Indeed, California banned lead ammunition for hunting two years ago.
So if lead ammunition is banned, what will hunters and gun owners use? The obvious answer is non-lead “green ammo,” whose bullets are made from some other metal than lead—brass, bronze, copper, tungsten or some combination, just to name a few.
But if non-lead-containing “green ammunition” is outlawed under BATFE’s M855 ammo ban ... and lead-containing ammunition is banned as an environmental hazard, what’s left?
Guns won’t work without projectiles. And the ballistic coefficient of marshmallows is terrible.
That’s what I mean when I call this a “pincer movement.” But it’s just one of the ways the Obama administration is attacking gun owners, guns, ammunition and the Second Amendment freedom to own them.
Open Season On Hunters
Hunters are a core constituency of the right to keep and bear arms, and the Obama administration is doing its best to divide and conquer us, too. If you want proof, just look at the ivory ban Obama has been pushing through his Fish and Wildlife Service.
While the NRA fully supports efforts to combat the illegal poaching of elephants, Obama’s scheme would have no effect on poachers. What it would do is ban the domestic sale of almost anything containing ivory—including musical instruments or your grandfather’s side-by-side shotgun fitted with an ivory bead—unless you could document that the ivory was at least 100 years old. Who keeps sales receipts for 100 years?
Not only would this scheme make countless gun collectors’ firearms worthless, it’s also a sneaky way to try to drive a wedge between wealthy hunters and gun collectors, and the typical American deer hunter, who can only dream about owning an ivory-gripped 1911 or traveling to Africa on safari.
But it’s all part of Obama’s cultural war on gun ownership, hunting and all that goes with it. And it’s gathering momentum.
Just this week, following the furor over an American dentist killing “Cecil the lion,” three major U.S. air carriers—American, Delta and United Airlines—announced that they will no longer transport buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion or rhino trophies taken legally by law-abiding hunters. Not to be outdone, Delta said it planned to “review acceptance policies of other” game. It’s all part of Obama’s cultural war on gun ownership, hunting and all that goes with it. And it’s gathering momentum.
Meanwhile, young women who dare to hunt and write about it on the Internet are routinely vilified and terrorized with hateful attacks and death threats on social media ... the animal “rights” and hunting-ban lobbies fill their coffers with millions of dollars raised on the uproar … and Barack Obama and his armies of bureaucrats fan the flames for political gain.
Whether it’s Obama’s BATFE first approving, and then revoking its approval, of a gun accessory built to accommodate disabled shooters, or arbitrarily reclassifying a flare gun owned by millions of boaters as a verboten explosive, it seems that not a week goes by without another sneaky, unilateral attack on the Second Amendment from the White House.
The Most Dangerous 535 Days For American Freedom
It almost seems as if Obama is doing it out of spite. Think about it.
None of the legislative proposals he pushed would have stopped the very crimes he used to try to sell those schemes—and he knew that. So when he couldn’t win on the legislative chessboard, he swept the chessmen off the board, upended the board and angrily stomped off.
As this is written, 535 days remain in Barack Obama’s presidency. But Obama could very well do more damage to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in the next 535 days than could all 535 members of the U.S. Senate and House combined—even if they tried.
He’s doing it through his executive actions. He’s doing it through his agencies. He’s doing it through regulation. He’s doing it through international treaties. And he’s doing it through cultural war.
If you want to stop Obama; if you want to preserve your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, intact and undiminished, as the birthright of every American; if you hunt or value our outdoors traditions as a uniquely American and precious legacy; or if you agree that your right to own a gun to defend yourself, your family, your home and your freedom is worth fighting for—then you need to be a part of the only American organization big enough, brawny enough and ballsy enough to fight for all those things and win.
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Use Your Power!
If you cherish your right to keep and bear arms, you need to be a loud-and-proud member of the National Rifle Association of America. To continue the battle against President Obama and his war on firearm ownership, join, renew or upgrade your membership
here.
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