What the President's Executive Gun Control Really Means

     So today is the day that President Obama announces his executive action proposing new controls on the sale and purchase of firearms in the United States. The stated goal by the president is to reduce the amount of violence that individuals perpetrate on our society with the improper use of firearms. I refuse to accept the president's and others' characterization of violent acts using the term gun violence. That term, like social justice, is an instrument of the Left whereby they modify a real concept, i.e. justice or violence, with a prefix to the word that destroys its meaning and allows laws to be enacted based on the mangled result.
     I am a strong proponent of the Second Amendment, so much so that I am not in favor of 90% of the controls we currently have. The words in the Second Amendment, shall not be infringed, have long ago been buried by a mountain of infringements. The Framers of our constitution did not mean for the Second Amendment to apply to government control of the military as some anti-Second Amendment people try an argue. If that were the case they would not have repeated themselves in Article 1, Section 8 where they gave congress the authority over the military. They further would not have put such a collective right in the Bill of Rights, which outlined individual rights for the most part.
     All the above being said, I think President Obama's executive order on gun control is more about style than substance. I do not see it as being, as those on the Left are hoping, a panacea to eliminating innocent deaths as a result of the illegal use of firearms, or as those on the Right see it, a prelude to gun confiscation by an out-of-control federal government. There are literally tens of thousands of gun regulations and laws on the books throughout this country, most of which are never enforced. The President's dog and pony show featuring new gun control laws will, in my humble opinion, be just one more.
     President Obama knows he has no chance whatsoever of confiscating Americans' guns. However, he can enact his executive order which makes him look as though he is doing something, without actually doing something. And the more over-reaction there is on the Right, like the Oregon idiocy, the more decent, law-abiding, constitutional-loving Americans he can convince he might have a point. I think it is wholly appropriate for those on the Right to outline the constitutional challenges to President Obama's gun control executive order, but it is just the latest drop in a bucket that has been filling for decades.
     The president's executive order is illustrative of the misguided strategy of some on the Right placing all the focus on Barack Obama. The focus in this case should be on the bucket of laws and regulations that already exist, not this new drop being added. It (the executive action) is not going to lead to a police state, or the confiscation of guns currently in the hands of private individuals. But how some on the Right react (or over-react) to it will be the determinant of whether or not it will achieve its goal of weakening the Second Amendment right for millions of Americans.