In one of the Democratic debates in the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama was asked why as an Illinois state legislator he voted Present so many times rather than Yes or No. He turned to John Edwards and said perhaps with a touch of condescension, "Understand, John, that I led, not followed."
As President, Obama has indeed led in many respects. He authorized the Navy SEALs' daring raid that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. He is crushing Al Qaeda with targeted drone killings and commando raids. He has done as good a job as could be expected in responsibly phasing our military out of war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan. He oversaw the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which will allow millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions to get health coverage. He showed political savvy and compassion in issuing an executive order to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
There are people who believe that it is political suicide even to broach the possibility of a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Maybe, they are right. But if we are to do our best to prevent future massacres, such as the one that just occurred in Aurora, Colo., we need to do something other than offer condolences to the victims and speak of the very real acts of heroism of the survivors.
The reason why I have called for President Obama to issue an executive order banning these military-style firearms and magazines is because there is quite obviously no chance that a cowardly and intransigent Congress, in bed with the NRA, would risk passing gun-control legislation in an election year, or perhaps in any year given this political climate.
Some have called me naive, foolish or anti-Obama for proposing such an executive order, just as they did after I called for a weapons ban on the anniversary of the Tucson massacre. But if I were president, I would be haunted by the prospect of another massacre on my watch. We already had Fort Hood and Tucson during Obama's presidency. Now, we've had Aurora, Colo., as well as numerous other tragedies on a daily basis in towns like Chicago.
As Arianna Huffington pointed out in her Sunday Roundup, the U.S. has 20 times more gun fatalities than the next 22 richest countries combined.
Yes, we had massacres such as Virginia Tech and Columbine under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton as well as massacres under other presidents, but a true leader, one who leads, not follows, knows that the buck stops with him, as President Obama has often said.
A true leader wouldn't want to make a moral and political calculation and, like a reckless gambler, bet that there will be no further massacres in the next three and one-half months until the election. A true leader would implement an executive order banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines now.
If, God forbid, another massacre takes place before the election, what will President Obama tell families of future victims? He will probably cite scripture again and grieve with them, but in many respects his words will ring hollow because he will have failed to do the one thing that he could to try to prevent such atrocities -- and that is, to authorize a ban on these weapons and magazines immediately.
There are those who will continue to claim that I am politically naive. Maybe, I am just an idealist in that I am simply expecting more from our politicians than their own desire to hold onto power. We elected them, in particular President Obama, to show leadership, not to dedicate their tenure in office to getting reelected. Not one of these politicians will ever lack for work. If they, and that includes President Obama, lose their office, most will end up as lobbyists, media personalities, authors or lecturers, nearly all of them well compensated.
Chances are that President Obama will ignore my call for an executive order. That is his prerogative. After all, he wants to get reelected, and I want him to be reelected. But if another massacre transpires on his watch, sadly, he will have failed the leadership test. In a sense, he already has. He could have used his electoral mandate to try to push through gun-control legislation after Fort Hood, and he certainly could have issued an executive order after Tucson.
We need President Obama to vote other than Present on this issue.
Let's ignore BOTH the judicial and legislative branches of government, and go straight to autocratic executive rule.
Guys that think like this are the reason the Second Amendment exists at all.
An executive order is a reckless bet, and one Obama, and America would lose.
Without a public push for gun legislation an executive order would be branded tyrannical, motivate AMERICAN VOTERS to the poll, lead to his defeat, a repeal of the health care bill and 40 000 more death A YEAR as a result.
This is not counting all the women who would die under the GOP's reproductive tyranny and all the youths that would die in Romney's war on Iran.
And Romney would repel the order on his FIRST DAY in office.
I'm beginning to think you WANT Romney to win.
If you want GUN CONTROL, start building grass roots support for it.
You hate guns, you hate people that don't. You are not bothering to look at the source of violence - the individual. But violence, which is the true epidemic, doesn't need a gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1994
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_1994
Good thing we had gun control, someone really shot themselves in the foot.
"Impose a weapons ban by executive order?" Since when did a criminal or a gun-runner ever pay the slightest attention to a weapons ban?
The root cause of this problem is a lack of vigilance upon the part of what is today collectively called the Department of Homeland Security (sic).
This is the department which has paid billions of dollars to contractors to equip airport security (sic) checkpoints to strip-search you while they dutifully probe your belongings for tubes of toothpaste.
This is the department which has also paid billions of dollars to put facial-recognition cameras on miles of Interstate highway light-poles.
They are now spending billions of dollars on Tom Swift and His Flying Robots, and they want to start carving away commercial air space allocations to make room for these para-military weapons to fly through a neighborhood near you, piloted by a para-militarized policeman. (Hope you don't live on the second floor.)
But here we have an arsenal of weapons and explosives, military grade body armor, blah-de-blah and we're told this happened on THEIR watch.
Don't blame the guy at the top; don't ask him to issue an edict that will be ignored. Ask the captains of the watch.
It's too late to ban guns. What can be done is reinforce the background check policy and curtail gun sales online. Sellers should contact gov agencies if see red flags, if they are willing to.
Guns are not toys.
While I agree with the sentiment of the statement above, I think it does Obama too much credit to say he is voting "Present." That implies that he is at least in attendance while the gun control debate is taking place. What evidence suggests Obama has been anything but absent from that debate since becoming President?
But this is wishful thinking, you are correct, Obama has already failed. He failed by saying nothing, doing nothing, he's honed his skills as a mourner in chief, but in his most sacred duty, to protect the American people he's been derelict. It's fine to be aggressive using drones in Pakistan, but what is happening there is a sideshow compared to the carnage right here in our neighborhoods, homes, malls, restaurants, post offices, schools, movie theaters, anywhere and everywhere. Let's stop the madness.
Mr. President, we elected you to lead, not to mourn.
polictical strife.
We're an irrational nation in so many ways, clinging to platitudes about freedom and God rather than looking at evidence and seeking change. It's no coincidence that these absurd gun laws remain an intractable blight in the same country where nearly 50% of people believe that God created the earth in the last 10,000 years.
Reason can't penetrate the willful variety of American ignorance. It's crass beyond belief, and embarrassing to a lot of us -- but not, unfortunately, to most of us.