Revealed: Who Obama Just Met With Has Many Terrified About His Next Exec. Order

 

Warner Todd Huston December 17, 2015  

As he looks for ways to use executive orders to purportedly put new limits on the Second Amendment, President Obama has been raising eyebrows with the list of anti-gun advocates he has invited to the White House to help him craft those new rules; and some feel these big anti-gun names make clear what Obama’s intentions really are.

A recent piece at CNN reports that Obama has met with several well known anti-gun advocates.

Chief among those who have been brought to the White House to assist Obama’s team in writing his executive orders is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York and one of the nation’s leading gun control advocates.
 
Bloomberg has become notorious for using his money to push anti-gun policies and candidates across the country, though he has rarely had much success for all his efforts.
Bloomberg’s former anti-gun group has recently morphed into the group now called “Everytown for Gun Safety,” in an effort to soften the negative opinion many had of his previous organization “Mayors Against Illegal Guns.”

Also visiting the White House has been former Arizona Representative and shooting victim Gabby Giffords, who has had a second career as an anti-gun advocate since being shot by a mentally ill man in a 2011 incident that killed six and wounded 13 more.

One of the policies that Obama may try to push is the closing of the so-called “gun show loophole” and eliminate the current exemptions that allow individuals to sell guns to each other without initiating a background check on the buyer.
There is much research on the so-called “loophole,” though, showing that it really doesn’t even exist. As the CATO Institute revealed, there is no such thing as the gun show loophole.

 Despite what some media commentators have claimed, existing gun laws apply just as much to gun shows as they do to any other place where guns are sold. Since 1938, persons selling firearms have been required to obtain a federal firearms license. If a dealer sells a gun from a storefront, from a room in his home or from a table at a gun show, the rules are exactly the same: he can get authorization from the FBI for the sale only after the FBI runs its “instant” background check.
 
The so-called loophole comes in when private owners who are not selling guns or ammunition as a business venture or as a stream of income sell their own privately held guns to others. In other words, if a private owner wants to sell or trade a gun he owns, he is not required to run a background check on his buyer. This exemption also holds when a gun owner passes away and leaves his firearm to a relative in his will or similarly gives guns away to relatives or friends. CATO also points out that while there is a background check exemption for private owners selling their guns, only a tiny percent of total gun transfers in the nation come from such sales.
 
CATO further reports that the attack from the left on gun shows as a source of criminal use of guns is illegitimate because only 2 percent of guns used in crimes come from gun shows.

If Obama eliminates this “loophole,” that means private citizens will not be able to sell or pass on guns without going to the expense of initiating a background check on the person who would receive the firearm, a burden that gun rights advocates say is onerous.

Regardless, Obama’s attempt to supposedly put more limits on the Second Amendment is at odds with both the Supreme Court and public sentiment.

Over the last decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a steady stream of decisions that have more liberally interpreted the Second Amendment. The Court has also struck down several restrictions imposed on the right to own firearms in many of the country’s largest cities.

But even before the Supreme Court began to liberalize gun rights, the states were leading the way by reversing bans on concealed carry and loosening rules for permits. In 2013, Illinois became the last U.S. state to reverse its ban on concealed carry; and now, for the first time in history, all 50 states have some sort of concealed carry law. And today, a move to allow open carry has been gaining steam.

Public sentiment is also increasingly favoring gun rights. In fact, just this month–and for the first time since the question has been polled–more Americans now say they are opposed to a ban on “assault” weapons. A recent Washington Post/ABC News survey found that 53 percent of respondents opposed an assault weapons ban, down from a 2013 poll that showed over 50 percent supported such a ban.