One hundred days in: citizen disarmament lobby is getting restless

April 30, 3:02 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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   AP photo/Gerald Herbert

One hundred days into the Obama presidency, he seems still to be enjoying the honeymoon with most of the special interest groups that supported his candidacy.  The quite liberal Huffington Post's "100 Days" roundup, for example, has vastly more praise than criticism for Obama's performance so far.  That should not come as a surprise, given the fact that Obama's philosophy dovetails fairly neatly with the editorial leanings of the Huffington Post.

One of the rare exceptions to the nearly worshipful ratings, though, was from the forcible citizen disarmament lobby.  While they express cautious optimism about the future, they've made pretty clear that with the election of the most rabidly anti-gun president in history, coupled with huge majorities of Democrats in both houses of Congress, and an almost uniformly radically anti-gun Cabinet, they're a bit disappointed with what they see as a lack of action so far.

First, the Brady Campaign's Paul Helmke:

Trying to "grade" President Obama's first hundred days with respect to gun violence prevention is like grading a student who has registered for class, done a good job with preparations, but has put off attendance and test-taking to the next semester.

I don't know where Helmke went to school, but it's hard for me to imagine a professor who would award better than a failing grade to a student who had "done a good job with preparations, but has put off attendance and test-taking to the next semester."

Here's one of the things Helmke wants Obama to address:

We have also learned that a large percentage of the firearms traced at crime scenes in Mexico come from the United States, including military-style assault weapons used to murder police and innocent bystanders in Mexico's drug war.

And we have also seen that "large percentage" soundly and repeatedly debunked, but if you have most of the big media, plus the federal government, reinforcing that lie, why back off from it, right?

Couldn't help but notice this sentence:

The president should make it clear that efforts to disrupt trafficking in illegal guns and stockpiling of private arsenals are not a threat to law-abiding gun owners.

Hmm--"efforts to disrupt trafficking in illegal guns"--what would those efforts entail, making it "more illegal"?  Kinda like escalating the "war on drugs"?  Yeah--that should work.  As for the "stockpiling of private arsenals," is the Brady Campaign now pushing for limits on the number of guns a citizen can legally own?

There's much more, but let's take a quick look at the Violence Policy Center's Josh Sugarmann's complaints.

Yet on Capitol Hill and in the White House, the response remains for the most part muted. Citing the perceived power of the National Rifle Association, calls for increased gun controls are dismissed on Capitol Hill as being unrealistic. 

[ . . . ]

But now even AG Holder finds himself in the surprising position of citing the NRA's catch-all solution to gun violence: enforce the gun laws on the books.

Apparently, both Helmke and Sugarmann want Obama to exercise legislative powers he no longer has, in addition to his executive powers, judging from their calls that he pass a new "assault weapons" ban, and close the "gun show loophole."

The anti-gun jihadists are finding it more and more difficult to hide their frustration over the decision, by both the White House and most of Congress, to wait for the time to be ripe before striking on the anti-gun agenda.

Ready for a surprise?  I agree with them.  If, as the Brady Campaign claims, the November, 2008 election results are a "mandate from the people" for more restrictive gun laws, bring it on.  Don't wait, in an effort to protect the "blue dog" Democrats--if you claim to represent The People, and if The People want your draconian gun laws--there should be nothing from which to protect them.