President Barack Obama tells CNN’s Fareed Zakaria his greatest regret from the past eight years was his inability to further restrict the Second Amendment via more gun control.
If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun safety laws.
Zakaria said, “He failed to pass any firearms legislation. By the time it became a priority he simply did not have the political capital.”
The segment went on to show that gun control only became a priority after the December 14, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary, but it was too late. Americans were not interested in passing more gun control in response to an attack wherein the gunman, Adam Lanza, had bypassed all gun laws by stealing the weapons he used to carry out the attack.
The Obama administration tapped Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) to push universal background checks in the months after Sandy Hook; grasping what the Democrats’ viewed as a window of opportunity to secure legislation they had long desired but failed to secure.
In the end, Manchin’s gun control legislation failed to pass and Obama failed with it. CNN quoted Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), saying, “Let’s be honest here, there haven’t been the votes in the Congress for gun control, make no mistake about it.”
One quick point about Obama’s assertion that “the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun safety laws.”
This statement seemingly refers to the universal background checks Democrats have pushed and repeatedly failed to pass. It is important to note that Paris, France, has universal background checks. France also has bans on entire categories on guns, mental health checks, and other requirements that must be met before a person is allowed to own one of the few guns that can be legally obtained. Yet Paris witnessed 12 people gunned down during the January 7, 2012, attack on Charlie Hebdo and another 130 gunned down during the November 13, 2015, Paris terror attack.
Moreover, on July 14, 2016, a terrorist bypassed all gun control and used a truck to kill 84 in Nice.
Closer to home, Washington state, California, and Colorado have universal background checks too. Yet on September 23, 2016, five innocents were killed in a mass shooting in Burlington, Washington and on December 2, 2015, a duo of attackers killed 14 in San Bernardino, California. On November 27, 2015, three were killed in an attack on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood and less than a month prior, on Halloween Day, three more innocents were gunned down in the streets of Colorado Springs during a daytime attack. And the list goes on.
The bottom line–background checks do not stop determined attackers, period.
Connecticut had background checks and what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rated as the fifth “toughest” gun control laws in America when Sandy Hook occurred. But all those laws went out the window when the attacker decided he would simply steal his guns.
Seen in this light, Obama’s greatest regret is one of freedom’s clearest victories. The Second Amendment survived his presidency.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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