Dead Assault Weapons Ban in U.S. Senate — Are Gun Rights Now Safe?
Round one of the gun control battle on Capitol Hill has been seemingly won by default by the protectors and supporters of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. This win for gun rights advocates became obvious to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) this week. He ordered Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to pull the so-called assault weapons provision from the bill. This bill had been passed by the Democrat controlled Judiciary Committee.
This comes on the heels of what appeared by many vote counters inside the Washington D.C. Beltway to be headed for total defeat. Even Reid’s own count reportedly indicated the most Democrat votes that could be mustered to support the assault weapons ban was only 40. This is far less than the 60 votes President Obama needed to prevent a Republican filibuster of the bill. This is a victory for gun rights in the continuing congressional gun control battle.
For the hysterical claims and attacks raised by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in an attempt to strong arm national gun rights supporters with their bluster, it is a bitter defeat. This is also an important set back to the hysterical theatrics that the president displayed as he attempted to use his bully pulpit to force congress to submit to his will after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Despite the facts that demonstrate the shooter, Adam Lanza, was suffering from apparent severe mental illness issues, Obama resorted to scare tactics to pin the blame on gun rights. This is where he failed to exercise true presidential leadership. He clearly purposed his focus on fear mongering because it was what the liberal media hysteria machine wanted and craved. After all, who would be able to sustain the withering assaults from the main stream media, he had to reason.
But, Obama and the alphabet soup of media networks underestimated the commitment of gun rights and constitutional advocates who were unwilling to witness nor permit the undoing of those basic rights Americans hold dear. When the president felt he was falling back on what he thought was an easy target, gun owners, gun owners and supporters instead locked arms and moved forward!
Even former astronaut Mark Kelly’s recent cheap trick to spur on support against gun owners did not prevail. He tried to resurrect the legitimate sincere sympathy Americans felt over the attack upon his wife, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords. She had survived a vicious attack in an armed assault against her which resulted in the tragic deaths of six victims in Tucson, Arizona in January 2011.
Kelly tried, in vain, in March to dramatize that the legal buying of an AR-15 style weapon was somehow a national news story special bulletin about the evils of assault style weapons. It fell flat, because Kelly had purchased the gun legally and had gone through the proper legal guidelines to register the weapon. So where was the story and where was the news if everything he did was legal?
Guess what, Kelly: there is no news, just because you and the mainstream media want to gin up hysteria. America does not need you to tell them what parts of their constitutional Second Amendment rights are legitimate and what are not. Get a clue, Kelly, all of the rights are legitimate and not open to debate, discussion or compromise.
What does this abandonment of the assault weapons ban portend for the President? After all, in his February State of the Union remarks, he stressed how parents and families of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School deserved a vote that included an assault weapons ban. Obama has skipped away, clean out of the country on this one, and all the way to Israel.
It points to the very clear principle that Obama stands on, which is, his word has no honor and no value, even for his supporters. He seeks the coward’s approach, which is to duck and hide overseas in Israel while his handlers take the hit from his support base. Not a surprise for a person who has been perpetrating a fraud on the American people on other issues since he took office in 2009.
In truth, Obama has no clear principles and his behavior in previous armed assaults by lunatic madmen with weapons proves as much. He game is to merely whisper sad condolences into the ear of victim survivors of tragedies, from purported deranged shooters like James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado, or Jared Lee Loughner in Tucson, Arizona or even from Major Nidal Hasan in the Fort Hood massacre.
The reality is that Obama does not seek true solutions to the gun violence which has taken a tragic toll on innocent American victims. He ducks and dodges the true solution which is to reform and tighten rules which govern a failing and severely crippled mental health care system. He would rather tap dance on the convenient stage provided by the liberal, main stream media to attack, attack and attack again the sovereign rights of citizens and states. Obama wants to strip rights from the U.S. Constitution, not strengthen those very rights and protections.
So what of the crocodile tears that Obama apparently shed for the national media as he spoke that wintry night in Newtown in front of the family and friends who suffered a loss in the shooting? He assured them, as he swiped tears from his eyes, that he would commit the full weight of his presidential office to securing justice for them.
Of course, he did not mean it. Even though the survivors’ tears were real, his tears were clearly manufactured, there and in his White House comments later. The bottom line, is that Obama did not see a pathway where he could further his political ambition to demoralize the conservatives and Republicans by continuing to support an assault weapons ban that his own Democrats in the senate did not back.
Now, the die is cast for Obama to try yet another avenue to assault the gun rights of Americans, but at least on this day, Obama and his fanatical gun control supporters have lost a fight to blow a hole in Americans’ constitutional gun rights protections.