Obama Squirts a Few and Then Lies About Not Wanting to Take Your Guns Away

Twitchy is merciless on Obama's crying, and how what was a Boehner punchline is somehow a sign of Obama's nobility.

The media gushing even sounds even more maudlin en francais:

Les Larmes d'Obama, une film par Weeps McMoistbottom

Obama reassures the nation that he doesn't want to take all your guns away, despite previously praising Australia's common-sense gun-control measure of taking all your guns away.

The Volokh Conspiracy's Jonathan Adler says Obama's new gun control measures are legally meaningless -- just restatements of the current law. And if they were more than that, they'd be unconstitutional.

He notes that today's actions were not executive orders, but executive actions, specifically "guidances" on current rules, not new rule-makings. The rule-making would be a lengthy process (requiring public notice, and going through the bureacracy, I suppose) which Adler doubts Obama could even finish before his term was up.

So the executive action does not disturb current law; it simply either restates it or clarifies it.

Adler thinks two possible reasons for doing this are to "chill" what he calls "marginal" gun sales (sales by people who are in a nether real between "dealer" and "hobbyist," signalling maybe to them they should err on the side of caution) and as a strictly political show that he's "doing something" for his base.

I guess if his base will be satisfied with this, we should count ourselves fortunate.

(By the way, I'm going to stay live in the music thread below, too.)

posted by Ace at 03:09 PM

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