Obama Lists Regrets — Again: Failure to Secure Gun Control Still #1

In a January 4 “exit letter” to the American people, President Obama again listed what he regrets most about the last eight years. Number one on the list was his failure to secure gun control.

Obama shared this same regret with CNN in early December 2016, and the BBC quoted him in July 2015 speaking about the “distressing” failure to secure gun control.

On Wednesday, he used the letter to highlight his regrets once more. After listing numerous things he views as achievements–such as shifting from coal to solar power, pulling out of Iraq, pulling out of Afghanistan, and securing Obamacare–Obama wrote:

Still, through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy, and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime. And for all that we’ve achieved, there’s still so much I wish we’d been able to do, from enacting gun safety measures to protect more of our kids and our cops from mass shootings like Newtown, to passing commonsense immigration reform that encourages the best and brightest from around the world to study, stay, and create jobs in America.

Regardless of whether a gun control group or an individual gun controller like Obama raises the topic, it is notable that no gun law would have prevented the Newtown, Connecticut, attack against Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is especially notable that the gun controls President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) pushed in the wake of Sandy Hook would have done nothing to prevent another Sandy Hook.

Manchin touted an expansion of background checks in reaction to the Sandy Hook attack. And then, just days before the Senate rejected the gun controls, he admitted that his proposal would not have prevented the attack.

Isolated Sandy Hook-like attacks continued around the country during the last four years of Obama’s presidency, and background checks would not have stopped one of them. But nearly all of them could have been reduced–or perhaps prevented altogether–by changing the one commonality many of them shared: namely, policies that mandate the disarmament of law-abiding citizens in certain buildings and/or locations.

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.