As President Obama and Democrats in the House and Senate push a no-fly list recently rejected by The Washington Post and berated as unconstitutional by the Los Angeles Times, one thing is certain: the push comes at a time that conveniently distracts attention from the failure of Democrat-sponsored gun controls in California.

Think about it: Democrats on the national stage have been relentless in their push for expanded background checks since the heinous attack on Sandy Hook Elementary. Although the absence of expanded background checks had nothing to do with Sandy Hook, Obama, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Democrat surrogates like Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly have spent over three years telling us expanded background backs are a “common sense” component of Americans’ safety.

The push for these checks was so intense that groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America were created to push the checks.

Then came December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, where they already have expanded background checks. Did the checks deliver the promised safety? No. Instead, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik used “legally” purchased weapons to slaughter 14 and wound 21 in an attack that expanded background checks were powerless to prevent.

We saw the same thing in Colorado, where expanded background checks became the law of the land in the spring of 2013. In spite of these checks, Noah Harpman shot and killed three in Colorado Springs on Halloween 2015, and on November 27, Robert Lewis Dear shot and killed two civilians and one police officer at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Now, in addition to the utter failure of expanded background checks in both California and Colorado, it must be noted that California also has specific firearm registration requirements for “assault weapons,” and two of the weapons that Farook and Malik used were “assault weapons.” So where is the effectiveness of gun control? Instead of the discovering such effectiveness, the more one looks at the San Bernardino attack, the more one sees how gun control empowers the criminal–or terrorist–by making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to acquire the guns they need for self-defense.

The push to add the no-fly list to background checks distracts from this, thereby allowing Democrats to completely avoid addressing the fact that expanded background checks failed to deliver on the promises of safety and security that surrounded their passage. In fact, the push to add the no-fly list to background checks is at such a fever pitch that it also allows Democrats to avoid one other important point–namely, that Syred Farook and Tashfeen Malik were not on “any list” pertaining to terrorists in the U.S., according to CNN.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.