Mike Huckabee

President Obama spent most of the first year of his first term pushing Obamacare instead of focusing on a struggling economy. Now, in the first year of his second term, the economy is still in the tank, Obamacare is now scaring even its supporters because of it’s increasing costs and decreasing access, and the President is focused on a new crusade---gun control. He is back on his perpetual campaign trail, selling snake oil while we need to be killing snakes. He claims that 92% of the American people support his proposals and calls them common sense approaches. Frankly, there’s nothing common nor sensible about adding more laws on those who don’t break the ones we have in order to persuade the people who ignore the ones we have to start obeying the ones we create. One thing we do all agree on—we never want to see another shooting like Sandy Hook or Aurora. But it would help if we at least brought our brains to the discussion. This week in California, the President claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was done by a “fully automatic weapon,” which it wasn’t. Those have been banned since 1934. CO Congresswoman Diane Degette was virtually laughed out of the room when she suggested that limiting the size on a magazine would eventually eliminate large capacity magazine because she somehow imagined that magazines disappeared or disintegrated after use. The NRA has been mocked by the media and elites like NY Mayor Bloomberg for suggesting that armed good guys are the best defense against armed bad guys, but the Mayor needs to stick to banning salt, soda, smokes, and loud sounds because the number of victims in mass shootings stopped by police is 14; the number of victims when the shooter is stopped by an armed citizen is 2.5 . In the past 50 years in the US, every mass killing with 4 or more victims with the single exception of the Gabby Giffords shooting—every one was in a gun-free zone. Senator Lindsay Graham reported this week that 80,000 people failed a background check last year, but only 66 were prosecuted. Maybe it’s not a lack of laws, but a lack of law enforcement we need to work on. Many proposals seek to ban a gun because of the way it looks rather than the way it works. The FBI reports that in a recent year, only 4% of gun crimes were committed with a rifle; 66% were committed by a handgun. More people are killed with hammers and clubs than with rifles. According to studies by criminologists, between 800,000 and 2.5 million crimes are actually prevented by armed citizens. As a blogger called the “Wolf” points out, a gun puts a 100 pound woman on equal footing with a 220 pound mugger; a 75 year old retiree on the same footing with a 19 year old gang-banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a truckload of guys swinging baseball bats. Of course it’s best to avoid dangerous situations, good to flee from them, great when a cop is right there to intervene. But if those aren’t options, and the person attempting to rape, rob, or murder you or a loved one can’t be reasoned with or run from, then wearing a gun is better than wearing a toe tag. Mr. President, that’s my version of common sense.