On December 16, Vanity Fair ran a column claiming President Obama has “no f**ks left to give” on gun control, which is their way of saying his lame duck status means he has no reason to hold back in efforts to institute all the gun control he can before leaving office.
Vanity Fair claims there have been 13 mass shootings during Obama’s time in office. They point to a USA Today listing of 11 of those shootings, which were Fort Hood (November 5, 2009), Tucson Congressional event (January 8, 2011), Aurora movie theater (July 2o, 2012), Sikh Temple Shooting (August 6, 2012), Sandy Hook Elementary (December 14, 2012), Navy Yard Shooting (September 16, 2013), Fort Hood (April 2, 2014), Kansas Jewish Community Center (April 14, 2014), Charleston Church shooting (June 18, 2015), Chattanooga recruiting center shooting (July 16, 2015), Umpqua Community College shooting (October 1, 2015),
The only mass shooting in addition to these 11 was the December 2 San Benardino shooting–which was actually a terror attack, not a mass shooting–but even if we count that heinous event as a mass shooting it brings the total to 12 not 13. It should also be noted that the number of deaths of the Jewish Center was three, which does not meet the threshold for a mass shooting–the FBI has a four fatality threshold–but we kept the Jewish Center attack included because Vanity Fair had it in their list.
Nevertheless, Vanity Fair suggests Obama spent the previous years of his presidency “[giving] the traditional offering of thoughts and prayers” following such an event, but he has now run out of “f**ks to give” and is in a full press for more gun control.
They quoted him speaking after the shooting in the gun free zone at Umpqua Community College:
We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun. And what’s become routine, of course, is the response to those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue, ‘fewer gun safety laws.’ Does anybody really believe that? … And of course, what’s also routine is that somebody somewhere will comment and say, ‘Obama politicized this issue.’ This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic. . .
What Obama did not say–and what Vanity Fair did not point out–is that the commonality between all the mass shootings but two during Obama’s presidency is that the gunmen passed background checks to acquire their weapons. The exceptions were Adam Lanza–the Sandy Hook gunman who stole his guns–and Jewish Center gunman Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., who allegedly had someone else buy his shotgun for him.
Even though 10 out of 12 mass shooters submitted to background checks and passed them to acquire their guns, Obama has “no f**ks left to give” and is looking for ways to use executive actions to expand background checks to cover more sales.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.