The President was introduced by a father of one of the murdered students from the Newtown, CT incident. I take no issue with any facial expression that he might have produced in reaction to any disappointment of the preceding legislative actions. But, the forced expressions on the faces of the President and Vice President were nothing short of ridiculous.
They were melodramatically frustrated with the Senate for not passing the bill and they evidently wanted to make that well understood even to the hearing impaired. This sort of behavior doesn't lend much credibility to them politically, in my opinion. I'm picturing what the rest of the world must think of the U.S. when they see images like these (the original, sans the comical additions).
They were upset because they viewed the bill to be a perfectly non-invasive and helpful addition to gun control. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V. who co-authored the bill even went as far to say, "If you're a law-abiding gun owner, you'll love this bill." Though, as a law-abiding gun-owner, I neither love the bill nor do I see it as either non-invasive or helpful.
First of all, it requires a background check to be performed which is a service that costs money. Who is going to pay for all these background checks, you ask? Why the people, of course. Call it what you will, but it's in essence another tax on a product that we have explicit rights to own, buy, and sell without the government's intervention or restriciton.
Meanwhile, the background check inherently requires a registration of all transfers. We've already seen this be abused by our own federal and Missouri State governments at this link and at this link in direct violation of State law. Yet, over and over again, we hear that the information will not be compiled into lists ever used for any purpose or made available to any other agencies. Why is this bad? Because the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect the country from any tyrannical government, including its own. By requiring this information, compiling it into lists, and making this information available to other government agencies, they are collecting data to potentially use against us by a future tyrannical entity. This right of the government to be able to collect this information was never granted to it and when brought before the Senate last month they affirmed that the government should not be granted this ability.
Let's now deal with the fact that the President wants to make this about protecting our children. It's undisputed that he's using the Newtown massacre as a catalyst for these new gun control measures. But, the logic being used is all fallacious. A required background check would not have prevented Newtown. For that matter, it would not have prevented any of these recent mass-murders. No supporter of this bill has yet to come forward demonstrating that any of the weapons used in any of these events would have been restricted by the implementation of this required background check. The reason for this lack of demonstration: because it cannot be demonstrated. So, why is the President so emotionally involved in trying to pass this added restriction?
What the bill would have done is this: Law-abiding gun owners would have been burdened with the cost of more government regulation on all new gun transfers. Law-breaking criminals would still have their weapons of choice to do their destruction. The number of lives saved due to this legislation would not have been affected. It would have created a compiled list of all gun owners and the guns they own, giving the government an even larger advantage over their one check and balance: the people. It would have undermined our Constitutional right to bear arms. It would have been used to argue the need of even more regulation and restriction.
In conclusion, last month our U.S. Senate did their job. They recognized an unconstitutional, ineffective, and costly infringement on the rights of all U.S. citizens being proposed and they kept it from passing despite a large number of supporters interested in a power grab by exploiting an unavoidable tragedy.
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