Barack Obama, our nation’s Manipulator in Chief, is a master of talking out of both sides of his mouth.  He deigned us with a visit to Chicago yesterday.  Instead of trying to help people to understand the truth so we will all be better, smarter citizens, he was busy trying to manipulate.  He spoke for quite a while, bloviating about how America’s criminal class are poor, misguided souls just trying to turn their lives around.  If only, he suggests, we offered people who eschew education and work more jobs and free education, these violent thugs wouldn’t be victimizing innocent Americans.  If only the police didn’t pick on minorities in crime-addled minority neighborhoods, everything would be hunky-dorey.  If only our gun laws didn’t make it easier to buy a gun than a book.

Frankly, I’d like to find that neighborhood.  I don’t like needing two forms of ID, a Firearms Owners Identification Card (which takes 30 days or more to receive once the application is made), waiting one to three days to take delivery of my firearm after filling out a raft of paperwork and often making two visits to my federally licensed firearms dealer, once to initiate the paperwork, and once after the waiting period has concluded and a call in has been made to make sure I’m not a bad person.  If we had to go through all that to buy a book, book sales would pretty much cease.

But when has reality gotten in the way of Barack Obama’s rhetoric?

Barack Obama promoted more “reasonable gun control” yesterday.  He admitted that Chicago’s existing gun control has been a failure.  He went on to, in so many words, say that America needed to double-down on the failed scheme of racist, classist and sexist gun control.  He ignores the utter failure of “gun safety laws” in Chicago, and blames those evil “out of state” guns.

Does he mention that fact that thugs in Chicago who shoot people in drive-by shootings in Cook County get charged with Class 4 felonies which carry a sentence of one to three years in prison?  Does he not that convicted felons who shoot at people in Cook County and miss (on YouTube videos no less) are charged with a misdemeanor.   Yeah, those are real cases just this month.

Barack Obama doesn’t want to fix the crime problem.  If he did, he would urge Illinois to follow Florida’s example of prosecution of armed violent offenders and incarcerating them for a generation or more when they shoot guns in the commission of violent crime.  Because of aggressive incarceration of violent criminal predators in Florida, the Sunshine state enjoys the lowest recorded level of firearm violent crime in history.

Florida firearm violence hits record low; concealed gun permits up

(Naples Daily News) – In the so-called Gunshine State, home to the most gun permits in the country, firearm violence has fallen to the lowest point on record.

As state and national legislators consider gun control laws in the wake of last month’s Connecticut school shooting, Florida finds itself in a gun violence depression. The Firearm-involved violent crime rate has dropped 33 percent between 2007 and 2011, while the number of issued concealed weapons permits rose nearly 90 percent during that time, state records show.

“We’re happy to have facts and statistics put into these debates, because every time they do, we win,” said Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry Inc., a pro-gun-rights advocacy group.

No instead of clamoring for what works to keep families safer, Barack Obama wants more “gun safety” legislation – like that in Great Britain and Australia where the governments confiscated privately held firearms in the hands of law-abiding residents.

Katie Pavlich: Yes, Obama does want to take your guns

Within hours of the killings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last week, President Obama stepped to the White House lectern, admittedly without all the facts of the case, to shamelessly politicize the tragedy.

“Somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize,” he said.

Perhaps Obama’s open politicizing of the issue wasn’t the worst part, but instead it was his intellectual dishonesty when it comes to the “common-sense” gun laws he wants implemented.

“What’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: We need more guns, they’ll argue. Fewer gun safety laws. Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country — they know that’s not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws — including the majority of responsible, law-abiding gun owners,” the president said. “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

Guns Save Life’s President Bear St. Pierre talked with WTTW yesterday in response to Obama’s comments:

We spoke via Skype with the Savoy-based group’s president Eric “Bear” St. Pierre about President Obama’s comments today.

“I’m pretty sure based on a lot of the information I know of, that a lot of the guns used in crime aren’t purchased at stores. They’re stolen prior to the crime that it’s used to commit with. A lot of times, they don’t even have serial numbers on them at that point in time, to really trace them back to where they came from. So really, all the more gun control is going to do is [allow] for more classism, racism and sexism in our country because it’s law-abiding citizens who it’s effecting. It’s not effecting criminals. Criminals will always do crime, whether there’s a law that says that they shouldn’t. But the idea of the Second Amendment is to protect us from our government, or another government who’d try to come in and take control over our government.”

Wayne LaPierre from the NRA offered this, repeating what Guns Save Life has been promoting:  that this isn’t a gun problem, it’s a lack of prosecution problem.