So the president has made his speech announcing a “plan” to reduce gun violence through a combination of legislation and executive orders. The latter include 23 items, mostly dealing with background checks and mental health education. And the former, less likely to be enacted, initiatives include the following, per WaPo’s Philip Rucker and William Branigin:
Obama’s plan also includes reinstating and strengthening the assault weapons ban, restoring a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines, getting rid of armor-piercing bullets, ending a freeze on research into gun violence and providing additional tools to prevent and prosecute gun crime. It calls on Congress to pass a $4 billion proposal to help communities keep 15,000 police officers on the streets, as well as new gun trafficking legislation that would “impose serious penalties on those who help get guns into the hands of criminals,” according to the White House fact sheet.
The president cleverly reminded Republicans that Ronald Reagan supported an assault weapons ban, though presumably that was before secular-socialists led by Obama himself reduced American liberties to a bare minimum, making the stockpiling of military hardware in private homes a patriotic must.
It’s a sad commentary on the drift of the gun control debate over the years that this modest package has “overjoyed” advocates of stronger gun regulation, and is already being described by some conservative gabbers as as representing the end of American freedom and the destruction of the U.S. Constitution.
As with other Obama proposals like universal health coverage and action on climate change, he’s representing what used to be, and not that long ago, considered the bipartisan “center” of national politics. But believe me, within a few days it will spur the most savage ideological warfare imaginable.
