Obama mocks gun owners' concerns, says he is 'constrained' by Constitution

While speaking in Denver on Wednesday, President Obama mocked concerns expressed by gun owners and said that he is "constrained" by a "government of and by and for the people,” CBS reported.

“You hear some of these quotes," he said. "‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government.’ ‘We can’t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away,'" he added. “Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.”

Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro responded by saying that if Obama's statement was true, Americans would "never have to worry about democracies turning tyrannical, or electing tyrannical rulers."

"In this odd vision, Germany, Italy, and Spain remained liberal democracies throughout the twentieth century, World War II never happened, and Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and Turkey are all thriving centers of freedom," he added.

Shapiro argued that Obama's statement was "odd."

"The natural inference seems to be that if it were not for the Constitution, Obama would indeed pursue a federal gun seizure," he wrote.

But the concern is very real for a large number of Americans.

A Rasmussen poll released Thursday shows that 44 percent of likely voters believe the government will try to confiscate all privately owned guns "over the next generation or so," while half say it isn't likely.

A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that nearly half -- 48 percent -- said that government could use information obtained from background checks to confiscate legally-obtained firearms, The Hill reported Thursday.

On the same day as Obama's speech urging action on gun control, the Heritage Foundation reported that "loose language" in a bill put forward by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., could signal the start of a national gun registry.

David S. Addington wrote that the language "could be construed to allow the Department of Justice itself (or another agency specified by the Attorney General) to keep centralized records of who received what guns and where, by sale or gift from one individual to another."

In February, the NRA revealed an Obama Justice Department memo that said an assault weapon ban would not be effective without mandatory gun confiscation and that universal background checks would only work with federal gun registration.

Despite Obama's statement, the concerns are quite real, and not without merit.

"Like the villain at the end of every Scooby Doo cartoon, Obama’s offhand protest suggests that if it weren’t for those darn kids, he would have gotten away with it. Except that the kids are the founders, and 'it' is massive gun control," Shapiro said.

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