At Sandy Hook Memorial, Obama Showcases the Magical Thinking of Gun Controllers

On Sunday night,
speaking
at a memorial service for the 26 victims of Adam
Lanza’s horrifying
shooting rampage
at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton,
Connecticut, President Obama provided a window onto the magical
thinking of people who think such appalling crimes could be
prevented if only we had the courage to pass the right law:

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to
end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such
violence are complex, and that is true. No single law—no set of
laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless
act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do
better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save
another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief
that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown,
and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that—then
surely we have an obligation to try. 

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds
to engage my fellow citizens—from law enforcement to mental health
professionals to parents and educators—in an effort aimed at
preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we
have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really
prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage,
that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such
violence visited on our children year after year after year is
somehow the price of our freedom?

Finally, a president who has the guts to come out
against the murder of children. Not only that, but he is prepared
to confront those who, for murky but clearly frivolous reasons,
tolerate violence, oppose tragedy prevention, and shrink from
saving innocent lives. Because “politics” cannot be allowed to
obstruct the solutions that every decent, right-thinking person
favors.

Such as? Well, the president did not say. Neither did New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday, when he scolded
Obama for not taking a firmer stand against the wanton slaughter of
elementary school students. “We’re going to have to come together
and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this,”
the president had said, “regardless of the politics.” Bloomberg was
unimpressed:

Calling for “meaningful action” is not enough. We need immediate
action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have
not seen is leadership—not from the White House and not from
Congress. That must end today.

In Bloomberg’s view, then, we need action that is not only
meaningful but also immediate. Through leadership. By the White
House as well as Congress. He
reiterated
that message on NBC’s Meet the
Press
 on Sunday morning, when he got a little more
specific:

We kill people in schools. We kill them in hospitals. We kill
them in religious organizations. We kill them when they’re young.
We kill them when they’re old. And we’ve just got to stop
this….

What the president can do is number one: through executive
action he can order his agencies to enforce the laws more
aggressively. I think there’s something like 77,000 people who have
been accused of lying when they applied for a gun permit. We’ve
only prosecuted 77 of them. The president can introduce legislation
even if it doesn’t get passed. The president campaigned back in
2008 on a bill that would prohibit assault weapons. We’ve got to
really question whether military-style weapons with big magazines
belong on the streets of America in this day and age. Nobody
questions the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, but I don’t
think the Founding Fathers had the idea that every man, woman, and
child could carry an assault weapon. And I think the president
through his leadership could get a bill like that through Congress.
But at least he’s got to try.

Since Lanza
took
the two handguns and the rifle that he had with him on
Friday from his mother, who acquired them legally (and who was his
first victim), the relevance of lies by gun permit applicants
escapes me. Furthermore, the rifle, a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4
carbine, was
not covered
by the federal “assault weapon”
ban
(which expired in 2004) or by a smiliar law in Connecticut.
Even if it were, plenty of guns equally lethal against
schoolchildren (hundreds of millions, in fact) are widely
available. That is hardly surprising, since the “assault weapon”
category is arbitrary,
based more on scary, military-style looks than features that make
guns more deadly in the hands of criminals. Likewise, Lanza
reportedly used “high-capacity magazines” (holding more than 10
rounds), but millions of these are already in circulation, and they
can be readily fabricated no matter their legal status. (That’s
leaving aside the question of whether the need to swiitch magazines
or weapons makes much of a difference in a murderous assault on
defenseless people.) The notion that restrictions like these can
have a noticeable impact, let alone that they can “end” or “stop”
occasional outbursts of senseless violence, is hard to credit
unless you believe what Obama insists he does not: that evil can be
legislated out of the world by acts of Congress.

At Sandy Hook Memorial, Obama Showcases the Magical Thinking of Gun Controllers

On Sunday night,
speaking
at a memorial service for the 26 victims of Adam
Lanza’s horrifying
shooting rampage
at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton,
Connecticut, President Obama provided a window onto the magical
thinking of people who think such appalling crimes could be
prevented if only we had the courage to pass the right law:

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to
end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such
violence are complex, and that is true. No single law—no set of
laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless
act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do
better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save
another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief
that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown,
and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that—then
surely we have an obligation to try. 

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds
to engage my fellow citizens—from law enforcement to mental health
professionals to parents and educators—in an effort aimed at
preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we
have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really
prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage,
that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such
violence visited on our children year after year after year is
somehow the price of our freedom?

Finally, a president who has the guts to come out
against the murder of children. Not only that, but he is prepared
to confront those who, for murky but clearly frivolous reasons,
tolerate violence, oppose tragedy prevention, and shrink from
saving innocent lives. Because “politics” cannot be allowed to
obstruct the solutions that every decent, right-thinking person
favors.

Such as? Well, the president did not say. Neither did New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday, when he scolded
Obama for not taking a firmer stand against the wanton slaughter of
elementary school students. “We’re going to have to come together
and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this,”
the president had said, “regardless of the politics.” Bloomberg was
unimpressed:

Calling for “meaningful action” is not enough. We need immediate
action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have
not seen is leadership—not from the White House and not from
Congress. That must end today.

In Bloomberg’s view, then, we need action that is not only
meaningful but also immediate. Through leadership. By the White
House as well as Congress. He
reiterated
that message on NBC’s Meet the
Press
 on Sunday morning, when he got a little more
specific:

We kill people in schools. We kill them in hospitals. We kill
them in religious organizations. We kill them when they’re young.
We kill them when they’re old. And we’ve just got to stop
this….

What the president can do is number one: through executive
action he can order his agencies to enforce the laws more
aggressively. I think there’s something like 77,000 people who have
been accused of lying when they applied for a gun permit. We’ve
only prosecuted 77 of them. The president can introduce legislation
even if it doesn’t get passed. The president campaigned back in
2008 on a bill that would prohibit assault weapons. We’ve got to
really question whether military-style weapons with big magazines
belong on the streets of America in this day and age. Nobody
questions the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, but I don’t
think the Founding Fathers had the idea that every man, woman, and
child could carry an assault weapon. And I think the president
through his leadership could get a bill like that through Congress.
But at least he’s got to try.

Since Lanza
took
the two handguns and the rifle that he had with him on
Friday from his mother, who acquired them legally (and who was his
first victim), the relevance of lies by gun permit applicants
escapes me. Furthermore, the rifle, a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4
carbine, was
not covered
by the federal “assault weapon”
ban
(which expired in 2004) or by a smiliar law in Connecticut.
Even if it were, plenty of guns equally lethal against
schoolchildren (hundreds of millions, in fact) are widely
available. That is hardly surprising, since the “assault weapon”
category is arbitrary,
based more on scary, military-style looks than features that make
guns more deadly in the hands of criminals. Likewise, Lanza
reportedly used “high-capacity magazines” (holding more than 10
rounds), but millions of these are already in circulation, and they
can be readily fabricated no matter their legal status. (That’s
leaving aside the question of whether the need to swiitch magazines
or weapons makes much of a difference in a murderous assault on
defenseless people.) The notion that restrictions like these can
have a noticeable impact, let alone that they can “end” or “stop”
occasional outbursts of senseless violence, is hard to credit
unless you believe what Obama insists he does not: that evil can be
legislated out of the world by acts of Congress.