In case you missed President’s Obama’s latest impassioned spiel (and trust me, you didn’t miss anything even if you didn’t hear him), he was in Connecticut on Monday to attempt to reinvigorate his assault on assault weapons, etc. Having lost the first battle in the war to disarm Americans in the Democrat-led Senate, Obama was back, angrily importuning voters to call their Congress members and demand that they “rush to make” universal background checks a reality.
Actually, there was a line from the speech worth noting. About halfway through, the president told those assembled:
This is not about me. This is not about politics…. This is about these families and families all across the country who are saying let’s make it a little harder for our kids to get gunned down. [Emphasis added]
Take a moment to let those words sink in. He was reading from a prepared text, written with deliberation by professional speechwriters paid to make him look and sound good. James Taranto in Best of the Web Today called it “one of the worst lines in the history of presidential oratory,” adding:
What a bizarre thing to imagine anyone saying. No doubt lots of parents, upon hearing of school shootings, react with fright at the thought that the victims could have been anyone’s children, including their own. Surely for most rational adults that feeling quickly passes, given that the odds of such a thing happening are minuscule. But who would say, with that creepy detachment, ‘Let’s make it a little harder for our kids to get gunned down’? Only an exceedingly cynical politician.
One might add “a cynical politician who is always in it for himself despite his constant protestations that ‘this is not about me.’”
But, putting aside the clumsiness of the phrasing (which, granted, is easier said than done), what about Obama’s claim on its merits? Would the familiar three-pronged approach he laid out in the speech — conducting background checks, banning assault weapons, and limiting the size of magazines — curtail future Newtowns? For an answer, Taranto and this column turn to a gun control survey conducted by the website PoliceOne.com, which asked more than “15,000 verified law enforcement professionals” the same 30 questions in order “to share their perspectives on issues spanning from gun control and gun violence to gun rights.”
Some findings on key issues are as follows:
- When asked if a federal ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds would reduce violent crime, only 2.7 percent of respondents said yes, while 95.7 percent said no.
- When asked if a ban on so-called assault weapons would reduce violent crime, 7.6 percent said yes, 71 percent said no, and 20.5 percent thought it would increase violent crime.
- When asked about the likely outcomes at Aurora and Newtown if a legally armed civilian been on the scene, 80 percent said fewer casualties would have occurred, 6.2 percent said no casualties would have occurred, and 5.5 percent said more casualties would have occurred.
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