The politics of Obama's gun-control push

I’m still waiting; waiting for someone to show me how laws stop a person intent on breaking them. Daily on the roads I see people breaking speed limits despite the possibility that cameras will catch them and send a ticket in the mail.

In one of his last gasp efforts to “fundamentally change” America, President Obama is taking executive action—because he knows he never would get Congress to agree—to keep guns out of the hands of people he claims should not have them.

Stiffer background checks are supposed to achieve his goal of reducing “gun violence,” but 2015 saw a record number of background checks—and a large upsurge in gun sales—and yet people intent on breaking the law were undeterred. The two terrorists who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., did not have criminal backgrounds until they started shooting. The massacre at a school in Newtown, Conn., was committed by a disturbed man whose mother had legally obtained the guns.

Bloomberg reports, “A study by the Department of Justice found that just 0.7 percent of state prison inmates in 1997 had purchased their weapons at a gun show.”

“By contrast,” notes the study, “nearly 40 percent of inmates said they obtained the firearm used in their crime from family or friends, and 39 percent said they got the weapon from an illegal street source.”

The stepped-up screening process the president is demanding would not have stopped any of this.

What is going here is pretty transparent. President Obama’s gun-control push is less about guns than it is about politics. He is attempting to shore-up the Democrat liberal base before the election and to forestall the real possibility his over-the-top executive orders will be quickly reversed should a Republican win the White House.

It is also another display of what is at the heart of liberalism: The fallacy that intent trumps results. Liberals are rarely held accountable for their failed policies, but are instead praised for having lofty goals and the right attitude.

As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The left has transformed that road into a multi-lane highway, and it’s the rest of us who have to pay the toll.

© 2016 Tribune Content Agency LLC.

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