In an interview with the New Republic Barack Obama hinted at his gun control plans. Part of the plan is to undermine Republicans from the start.
President Obama is suggesting that House Republicans on the issue of gun control appear neither willing to work with him nor listen to the American public on the issue.
“The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they’re really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies,” the president said in an interview with The New Republic.
Obama also said he can get 50 percent of public support for many of his upcoming initiatives, but “I can’t get enough votes out of the House of Representatives to actually get something passed. … I think there is still shock on the part of some in the party that I won re-election.”
But here is the key portion
The president said he has a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that date back for generations.
He said that moving forward on the topic means understanding that the realities of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas.
He said it’s understandable that people are protective of their family traditions when it comes to hunting so “gun-control advocates also need to do “a little more listening than they do sometimes” in the debate.
In Obamaworld owning guns is about hunting- and nothing more. If you own a gun not made for hunting it means you want to kill someone. If you own a gun and don’t hunt you are a danger. A threat to national security.
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are to blame.
“If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it,” he said. “I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama.”
democrats, naturally, are entirely reasonable:
The president argued that “the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word” and that party leaders, including Senate Majority Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are “willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.”
But will Reid “get stuff done”? Reid suggested he would allow a Senate vote on the assault weapon ban:
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, signaled Tuesday that despite earlier indications to the contrary, he may allow a vote on a possible ban on assault weapons.
Reid, a longtime gun-rights advocate from Nevada, recently indicated he would not permit a vote because the Republican-led House of Representatives likely wouldn’t go along with such a prohibition.
Powerful gun-rights groups oppose a ban on assault weapons and could seek to unseat any lawmaker who backs it, as they have tried to do in the past.
But after a weekly meeting Tuesday with fellow Senate Democrats, Reid told reporters he expects “to have a free amendment process” on gun legislation.
That process could result in other Democrats proposing a possible resurrection of a 10-year ban on semi-automatic assault weapons that expired in 2004.
But GOP Sen. John Barrasso doesn’t think an assault weapons ban can pass the Senate and Reid won’t bring it to the floor:
Backing up what others have indicated, Barrasso said he doesn’t expect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring gun control bills to the floor.
“He has six Democrats up for election in two years in states where the president received fewer than 42 percent of the votes. And he doesn’t want his Democrats to have to choose between their own constituents and the president’s positions,” Barrasso said.
Reid won’t put his Senate colleagues in jeopardy by passing legislation that would not pass the House:
Reid said Wednesday he will bring legislation addressing gun violence — verbiage Democrats have adopted as more politically palatable than “gun control” — to the Senate floor. But Reid has balked at the prospect of making a strong push on a new federal assault-weapons ban because it would be a political liability and he doubts the House would pass it.
“Let’s be realistic,” Reid recently told PBS’s “Nevada Week in Review.” “In the Senate, we’re going to do what we think can get through the House, and I’m not going to go through a bunch of gyrations just to say we’ve done something. If we’re really legislators, the purpose of it is to pass legislation.”
Obama, via Feinstein, is going to seek the ban of all semi-automatic weapons- including hand guns. His position will be that hunting is the only reason to own a weapon and only hunting weapons need be permitted.
Reid may allow the issue to come to a vote but has promised an open amendment process, which will slow the process and potentially make passage difficult.
There are three possible outcomes:
– Reid will oversee sausage making in the Senate and when nothing comes of it he and Obama will both provide cover for his vulnerable colleagues and blame the GOP for the inaction.
– A watered down version of gun control (stricter background checks) passes and Reid and Obama blame the GOP for not passing something more substantial while Reid provides cover for Senate democrats.
– An assault weapons ban riddled with loopholes passes and Obama blames the GOP for blocking something stronger.
In the end, nothing meaningful happens, the GOP is blamed and Obama looks like he tried.
BTW, did you hear that Obama shoots skeet “all the time”? See? He’s just like us.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.