A Presidential Snit On Guns

Obama vents at the White House after being humiliated on gun control. Jacob Sullum notes Obama's limitless self-righteousness so I will focus on his detachment from reality:

By now it's well- known that 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks that make it harder for a dangerous person to buy a gun. We're talking about convicted felons, people convicted of domestic violence, people with a severe mental illness.

Ninety percent of Americans support that idea. Most Americans think that's already the law.

Ninety percent of the public supports this but the President couldn't push it through a Democratic-led Senate? That is a stunning failure of leadership and leaves one wondering whether Obama could organize a beer bash for thirsty sailors on the 4th of July.

But maybe his leadership is not so dismal, and it is his honesty (or knowledge) that is at issue. What do detailed polls actually show about support for background checks? CNN polled on this question in early April with interesting results:

According to the poll, 89% of Americans support the background checks already on the books - those required for purchases at gun stores and other businesses that sell guns. Three proposals, covering gun shows, person-to-person sales, and transfers between family members, would add to the existing laws, and 86% of Americans support at least one of those three additional checks.

The most popular is the gun show proposal, which 83% of all Americans support. Seven in ten favor background checks on prospective buyers trying to purchase a gun from another person who is not a gun dealer but owns a gun and wants to sell it. Least popular is a proposal to require background checks for buyers who are purchasing a gun from a family member or receiving it as a gift. Support for that proposal drops to 54% - still a majority, but not as popular as gun show requirements.

Let's put that as a graphic from PollingReports.com:

So when our peerless leader says that "90 percent of the American people support universal background checks" he really means that roughly 90% support the current law and a bare majority favor extending that law to family transfers.

I wonder if he knows he is wrong about this?

Well. If I were giving Obama advice I would say that in the same way that the best can be the enemy of the good, the stupidest can be the enemy of the marginally plausible. The assault weapons ban was a political non-starter that labelled its supporters (including Obama) as laughably ignorant on basic gun design and basic Constitutional issues. That inclusion tends to poison the subsequent conversation.

But don't take my word for it! Here is the NY Times describing Sen. Feinstein's debacle:

Almost immediately after the murders in Newtown, gun control advocates and the Democratic leadership in the Senate decided that legislation strengthening background checks for gun purchases was their best avenue for success. (Though in a sign of how they miscalculated over all, that measure was also defeated on Wednesday, falling five votes short.)

An assault weapons ban was never going to attract senators like Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, with A ratings from the National Rifle Association, whose support would be needed for a compromise. And Democrats now privately complain that Ms. Feinstein’s bill seemed to rally gun control opponents, who could point to it as Exhibit A in what they perceived as a federal conspiracy to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

Yes it did, and broadly worded polls showed fading public support for the control effort:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A bipartisan effort to expand background checks is in deep trouble as the Senate approaches a long-awaited vote on the linchpin of the drive to curb gun violence. As the showdown draws near, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows ebbing public support for tightening gun control laws.

...

Perhaps helping explain Democrats' problems, an AP-GfK poll this month showed that 49 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws. That was down from 58 percent who said so in January -- a month after the December killings of 20 children and six aides at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school propelled gun violence into a national issue.

When "stricter laws" includes fantasy and nonsense the public may lose a bit of the nuance. Add to that Obama's ongoing inability to move the needle and here we are. On to immigration reform!

CANDOR: Here is Obama using the same stale stats to make the case for expanded background checks:

All it did was extend the same background check rules that already apply to guns purchased from a dealer to guns purchased at gun shows or over the Internet. So 60 percent of guns are already purchased through a background check system.

This would have covered a lot of the guns that are currently outside that system.

I think he is impenetrable on this one, but it certainly adds irony to this:

But instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.

We know what he is but what are they?

 

Comments

[PaulV]

Lame Duck

[matt]

Epic fail for Feinstein.

[Rob Crawford]

Most Americans think that's already the law.

It is.

[Jack is Back!]

Cardinal O'Malley speaking now. But the bummer is that iBammy gets to speak also. I guess they couldn't find an Iman in the Boston area for the Interfaith service.

[peter]

imagine, me a Yankee fan, now liking Jonathan Papelbon

LUN

[Danube of Thought]

I realize that my smug gloating over their colossal, embarrassing failure on this one is quite ungentlemanly. But I can't help it.

[hit and run]

I got about 80% of the way through a Sad Clown Obama this morning, only to lose my work.

Guess who has the sad clown face now?

PaulV:
Lame Duck

Also thought about doing a Lame Duck(face) Obama (after reading a powerline post with this expression) - with Obama pursing his lips like all the really cool and hot lame people do online. Oh well, I do a lot fewer things than I think about and this will likely be added to that list.

[Danube of Thought]

USA Today has some advice for the Foreign Minister:

Mr. Secretary, you're not running for anything anymore. It's okay. You don't need to impress the electorate by showing us a superficial knowledge of sports we all know you don't possess.

Some of Kerry's greatest sports flubs:

-- When asked to name his favorite player on the 2004 Red Sox, Kerry responded, "Manny Ortez." It was an amalgam of Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and the short "E" sound that's not included in the surname of the latter.

-- Named Eddie Yost as his favorite player in Boston Red Sox history. Yost played 18 years in the majors, none for the Red Sox.

-- Called Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas by the name "Tim O'Brien."

-- Referred to Lambeau Field as Lambert Field.

-- Windsurfing. Always back to the windsurfing.

[NK]

O'Malley leadership failure to let any politician speak IMO.

TomM-- c'mon big guy, let's you and I get that firearms permit. As state residents we don't even have to go to the State Police Barracks, just the Town cops. PLUS under Connecticut law we have to pass an NRA-- yep THAT NRA-- firearms safety course PLUS live fire test at the police range-- how cool is that. So let's go down to police HQ and get going: http://www.ct.gov/despp/cwp/view.asp?a=4213&q=494614

[AliceH]

DoT: Add one more to your list.

Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Yankees fans for singing “Sweet Adeline” as a tribute to Boston while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday.

The song the former Senator from Massachusetts was thinking of was “Sweet Caroline,” which the Boston Red Sox play at home games.

Kerry is reportedly a huge Sox fan.

NB: Free Beacon tags this story "#mannyortiz" heh.

[Jack is Back!]

NK,

Wasn't O"Malley's call only his venue. But I agree iBammy should have been told that this was a memorial prayer service and limited to ministers of faith only. I can't believe O'Malley let a publically disclosed after-birth abortionist supporter to even walk into the Cathedral.

Think he would have listened? Doubt it.

[NK]

"Sweet Adeline"?... Jeez, what an idiot.

[Jack is Back!]

NK and AliceH,

The reason he got confused is the Sweet Adeline is the song that JFK's grand-father, Honey Fitz, former mayor of Boston would sing at many public ocassions. But Kerry is still an idiot for not knowing the difference. I do and I am not even from Mass or Boston.

[NK]

Leadership fail, just my opinion. No offense to Obummer, no politicians of any kind. O'Malley should have said go peddle politics down the street. Just me. If O'Malley thought he'd curry favor with cafeteria Catholics by letting the Dems blather, he's kidding himself.

[Jack is Back!]

Thinking about the Kerry goof, I suddenly realized that Joe Bite Me must have been behind his selection as SoS in order to have someone else replace him running the WH Gaffe-O-Matic machine:)

[AliceH]

I'd no sooner mix up "Sweet Adeline" and "Sweet Caroline" as I would "We are the Champions" and "We are the World". He'd have to be musically tone deaf. Plausible!

[Neo]

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?

Lance: What?

Kilgore: Legislation, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.

[kneels]

Kilgore: I love the smell of defeated legislation in the afternoon. The smell, you know that legislative smell, the whole hill smelled like

[sniffing, pondering]

Kilgore: LAME DUCK. Someday this administration's gonna end...

[rse]

http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/cultivating-understandings-of-consequence-to-guide-daily-life-and-prompt-desired-behaviors/ is a new post.

Understandings of Consequence is an NSF funded project at Hvd Ed school that appears designed to create belief about causal relationships among US students that actually do not exist. Ever so useful to a political schemer to be able to create influential false beliefs. Lots of cited research that if students are told there is a causal relationship they believe and act on it even when there are nothing but dissimilarities.

Twas a good scheme unless you read what is actually cited as support. Then it smells to high heaven.

No wonder they wanted no guns to go with deliberately weakened minds.

[NK]

70 hours out from the bombing-- no arrests, no wanted man postings, no status reports. Just the Napalitano thing mocking Drudge in Congress today. This is starting to feel more like TWA 800 instead of WTC '93 bombing. Not happy.

[Rick Ballard]

Shouldn't the Cuomo stupidity, rushed through in an effort to be first in licking the way to Bloomberg's checkbook, be mentioned as contributing to Reid's failure to maintain discipline within his caucus? Cuomo's botch invited heavier scrutiny of the Senate gun grab and lightened the NRA's burden considerably.

I rank it right next to Obama inviting his chief buggerer to the WH before dispatching him to Kentucky to provide fodder for the Children of the Cornhole.

Can McConnell construct another bipartisan ship and steer it onto the rocks wrt immigration? Will BOzo stamp his hooves even harder while watching it slip under the waves?

[Jack is Back!]

Conservative strategy to defeat Immigration is this: Call it more and more the Schumer plan not the Rubio plan. At least, that seems to be the MO right now.

[Rob Crawford]

I rank it right next to Obama inviting his chief buggerer to the WH...

Kal Penn?

[AliceH]

You know, one gun control measure I could have supported is to require all guns obtained in those silly buy-backs be investigated/ballistics tested and checked against evidence in unsolved crimes.

I was stunned when I read about the LA gun buyback being promoted by declarations of anonymity of the party turning in the gun and assurances the guns would just be destroyed - not checked. That sounded crazy to me.

[NK]

JiB-- cal it the Schumer Plan constantly (with photos of that smirking bastard) and have a House Plan as a substitute, that doesn't reward getting away with law breaking and ends the law breaking once an for all .. hint... guestworker status, citizenship? go home and back to the end of the line.

[Cecil Turner]

More to the point, those who vote based on gun control vote against it. Only deluded leftists would base their political hopes on Senators not up for reelection and lame-duck Presidents.

[Jack is Back!]

Kerry on Benghazi. Let's move on.

Where there is BS, there is a smell.

[Bill in AZ]

"This is starting to feel more like TWA 800 instead of WTC '93 bombing. Not happy."

Richard Clarke: "Those pictures of kids with backpacks? Just some foreign yutes taking in the sights and carrying their pressure cookers around. Now, everyone knows if you leave a pressure cooker in a black backpack in the hot sun, it's gonna explode. They're lucky they didn't explode while they were carrying them. Especially filled with gunpowder the NRA sold them at a gun show. Now if the GOP had just closed the gun show loopholes..."

[Captain Hate]

I was stunned when I read about the LA gun buyback being promoted by declarations of anonymity of the party turning in the gun and assurances the guns would just be destroyed - not checked. That sounded crazy to me.

It seems like they're surrendering the ability to prosecute any crimes in which the firearms were used.

[NK]

This is a complete outrage... Kerry's moveon dodge isn't the worst thing he said. Big Fat Lie to say there were no Benghazi lies ... Utter Bullshit... we know Hildabeast, Rice and Obummer ALL lied about the video 'riot'. It was a terrorist assasination, the Obamaniacs knew that day one, and they stood in front of flag draped coffins and lied to the victim's families. " KERRY: Let's figure out what it is that's missing, if it's legitimate or if it isn't. I don't think anybody lied to anybody. And let's find out exactly, together, what happened, because we need -- we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done. (House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 17, 2013)"

[']

Let's move on?? Kind of like when Kerry admitted to war crimes and paid zero price???
We'll just move on down the road. Nothing to see here. Kerry is filth. Never mind the 4 dead Americans. My brother is State Diplomatic Security. His life is on the line every day, and he is in North Africa.
Let's just "move on".

[Neo]

How can you blame the media when they report stuff like this ...

The gun control groups central to Obama’s push never lost faith in the White House and praised its efforts even as it was clear the push would fail.

“Bribery isn’t what it once was,” said an official with one of the major gun-control groups. “The government has no money. Once upon a time you would throw somebody a post office or a research facility in times like this. Frankly, there’s not a lot of leverage.”

... Oh yeah. The good old days of well greased bribery

LUN

[Neo]

Giffords's 900-word jeremiad should be included in every textbook of logic and political rhetoric, so rife is it with examples of fallacious reasoning and demagogic appeals.