Just hours before a gunman claimed three lives inside a Louisiana movie theater, President Obama on Thursday said the inability to pass gun-control legislation has been the frustrating aspect of his presidency.The perplexing juxtaposition referred to above is that the president expressed his frustration at not being able to disarm the American people just days after having worked so hard to secure an agreement with the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, that will free up $100 billion for them to supply weapons to terrorists around the globe and which they'll also be able to spend on developing a nuclear weapon with which to kill millions.
In an interview with the BBC recorded Thursday afternoon, the president vowed to continue trying but seemed resigned to the fact that this Congress is unlikely to approve any significant changes to gun laws.
“That is an area where 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, even in the face of repeated mass killings,” Mr. Obama said.
“And you know, if you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months,” he said.
Weapons in the hands of the wrong people is indeed a problem in the U.S., but it's no less a problem elsewhere in the world. Why strive to take guns out of the hands of Americans, the vast majority of whom use them responsibly, while at the same time work just as hard for a deal that'll facilitate putting guns into the hands of people, the vast majority of whom will use them to kill innocents?
Either President Obama does not see the irony and inconsistency in this, or he sees it and doesn't care. If it's the former then he's obtuse, if it's the latter then he's malevolent. As bad as it may make him appear, let's hope it's the former.