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Obama's Gun Control Stance Is All Politics
by James Glaser April 19, 2013 
President Obama is bemoaning his latest setback in Congress for his push for gun control in America. He keeps telling us that polling proves over 90% of Americans want background checks for gun purchases. Obama wants us to believe that support for his position on gun control is so strong it should have been a no-brainer to get it passed. However, President Obama forgot one important thing. Members of Congress are politicians just like he is, and they read the polls, too. Gallup, the same polling company that came up with that 90% figure, also did another poll. They do that. That poll showed that less than 5% of Americans felt gun control was an important issue:
For some reason, President Obama completely ignored that poll. He was just focused on one thing, victory for his control push. So, how did that work for him? Well, it seems that the months of playing every political trick in the book, and his constant exploitation of dead school children and their parents did his cause little good. His bill failed. Let's take a look at some of the real polling data:
Who needs poll anyway? You and I can figure out from our friends and neighbors that gun control or background checks are not the burning issue we want Congress to work on. But politicians live and die by the poll. So, like the president, our politicians in Congress read polls, too. They see that Obama's claim of over 90% backing does not hold water. They know from their office phone calls that Americans are still hurting for jobs, their voters are still losing their homes, millions still have no health care, and food stamp use is at an all-time high. Millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle still worry about Washington's spending and our budget always coming up in deficit. Congressional politicians know that in over four years of working on these problems, Barack Obama has gotten nowhere, and many believe this gun control crusade is a political move to get him a win at something. They also know the American voter wants them working on the issues that affect their family and pocketbook. President Obama will ride this gun control horse until the next election hoping to paint the Republicans as out of touch with America, but most Americans know where their problems lie. If by the fall of 2014, the country has not turned around and the millions hurting now are still hurting or that number has been added to, Republicans will probably pick up seats in both Houses. We have over 70 years of our country in almost constant war some place on this planet. We also have the same amount of time of Hollywood violence in motion pictures and 60 years of television violence. To that add the new violent video and computer games. Adding all that up and we can see we are a violent nation in thought and deed. Well with generations of violence embedded into our minds, any thinking politician is going to know that 90% of Americans are not about curb their desire to own a gun. Heck any politician with an ounce of brains knows that 90% of Americans will never agree on anything. We have a President who has no idea of how to work with Congress on the issues that Americans want him to work on. So what does he do? He grabs the first hot-button issue that comes along after his election, thinking a ground-swell of support for gun control will show the American people he really does know how to get things done, but when all is said and done, he loses that vote. Once again we can see that Barack Obama is a great campaigner and maybe a top-notch politician, but he doesn't have any idea of what America wants him to work on nor how to get it done. And for sure, he has not a clue on how to lead. |
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