How Is Barack Obama Taking All Your Guns Away Today?

Guns are shiny and good!

It's been a long seven years of waiting, but maybe, just maybe, this time Barack Obama will finally get around to confiscating all of America's guns. He's been busy selling us out to ISIS, Iran, George Soros, Mexico, and the climate scientists, after all, so some things had to wait until his "final" year in office (assuming he allows the 2016 elections to be held). While the details are still under wraps, Obama plans to give up on getting any legislation through Congress, and will announce several executive orders aimed at marginally increasing gun safety. These modest restrictions, expected to include expanded background checks and licensing requirements for gun sellers, will invariably mean the death of freedom and the arrival of the New World Order.

[contextly_sidebar id="V7D4Gi5XIJ4p3E5bcMs9FK5hKOryMKQk"]To help sell his proposals, which are expected to be announced sometime before his Jan. 12 State of the Union address, Obama will appear on CNN Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern for a town-hall style Q&A session on gun safety. The program, with the imaginative Freshman Composition title "Guns In America," is timed for one day before the fifth anniversary of the Tucson massacre that killed six and injured 12, including former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Get ready for Obama to be called ghoulish for politicizing the 2011 shooting; it's simply too soon to talk about guns, you know.

Obama devoted his weekly radio address to the topic of gun violence, calling for expanded background checks and an end to the gun-show loophole, noting that since the shootings in Tucson five years ago and Newtown, Connecticut, three years ago:

tens of thousands of our fellow Americans have been mowed down by gun violence. Tens of thousands. Each time, we’re told that commonsense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, so we shouldn’t do anything.

[contextly_sidebar id="34KuYIPQ5z11ciT57qz43yyxHDKK4Xcs"]Obama said that he'd received "too many letters from parents, and teachers, and kids, to sit around and do nothing," and repeated his belief that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to gun ownership, but also allows for regulations that will keep guns out of the hands of at least some dangerous people. When run through the NRA's Gun Panic Translator, the president's remarks clearly said, "I plan to confiscate all guns immediately." Of course, that is the only phrase it can emit, even when a gun enthusiast says the Second Amendment allows some limits on gun sales.

Monday, House Speaker Paul Ryan issued an angry denunciation of whatever the still-unannounced executive actions may be, because they are terrible:

Ever since he was a candidate, President Obama’s dismissiveness toward Americans who value the Second Amendment has been well-documented. He acts as if the right to bear arms is something to be tolerated, when in truth -- as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2008 -- it is fundamental. The same goes for the Constitution and its limits on executive power.

Ryan also said that most mass shootings are the result of mental illness, and said "we should look at ways to address this problem," presumably as long as they don't actually involve spending money on mental health care. As for everyday murders and suicides, pfft, those are merely part of being a Free Nation. Also, Paul ominously warned, Obama's stupid concerns about people getting shot all the time are merely a distraction from far greater dangers:

At a time when the country wants the president to lead the fight against radical Islamic terror, this is yet another attempt to divide and distract from his failed policies.

How true this is! With an annual average of 30,000 gun deaths, the equivalent of 10 WTC attacks a year, we can't afford to be distracted from our fear of radical Islam. But two thirds of those gun deaths are suicides, so we can ignore them -- or maybe say one more time we'll look at doing something about mental health.

Just to make sure he made the news cycle, semiautomatic shitcannon Donald Trump also vowed Saturday to "veto" any restrictions Obama may put in place:

"The Second Amendment, it's so great to me," Trump said at a campaign rally in Biloxi, Miss.

"We're not changing the Second Amendment."

Trump said to loud cheers that there is an "assault" on the Second Amendment as Obama considers executive action on gun control.

"I will veto that. I will unsign that so fast," Trump said.

No doubt on his first day in office. Everything will be done on his first day in office. Because he's a man who gets things done. Needless to say, the same teabaggers who think Obama is an unconstitutional monster for using executive orders cheered Trump's latest promise for an executive order.

Still, there's at least some evidence Obama may be able to put some kind of gun safety order in place and have it stick: Panic buying of guns and ammunition is up yet again, especially at gun shows. At a gun show in Birmingham, Alabama, the Guardian found plenty of people who were delighted at how good Obama Panic is for business. Elizabeth Bean, whose family runs the Great Southern Gun and Knife Show, said 2016 has already been a terrific year thanks to Obama:

“Attendance is up probably 75% over last year,” she said of the Birmingham show. That’s largely due to Obama, she said. “Every time he talks about it, he boosts attendance.”

Not surprisingly, the paper also found plenty of sellers and attendees who vowed that when the U.S. government comes to take away their guns, they'll go to war and "take some of them with me." We're not sure what they'd do in response to a mere executive order requiring expanded background checks. Maybe they'd issue a writ or something. Or sell more guns. That's always a good strategy. You sort of have to wonder how badly their business would be hurt if a Republican were elected.

[ Reuters / HuffPo / The White House / Speaker Paul Ryan / The Hill / WaPo / Guardian ]