Anyone else see the Pres remarks on gun control this afternoon? Love how he characterized anyone opposed to "reasonable gun control measures" as irrational. Only irrational people who are crazy and paranoid would distrust the federal government for wanting to take greater measures to restrict firearms. He tried to frame this as anyone who owns firearms for protection, hunting, or sporting purposes as not having to worry about the federales coming in and taking their guns. The left wants to characterize anyone who discusses the 2nd Amendment in terms of limiting the federal government as crazies or fringe elements on the outside of respectable society. You have the rights to bear arms as allowed by the federal government for specific purposes, not as constitutionally guaranteed. I'm leery of his comments and his promises to not take away peoples guns. I tend to think there is an agenda being slowly but steadily pursued to gradually desensitize us to the point where we will welcome the government confiscating our arms. Not every politician, but a few. It's those few and the insidious encroachments they undertake that are so dangerous. It doesn't take much to sway the public away from the real issues. What is so inherently dangerous about tactical weapons vice a semiauto rifle with a wood stock and no rails? Why is a 10 round magazine ok but not 11? where's the real outrage about the system that is spawning the violence? If we just ban high cap mags and scary rifles then it will be ok. When that doesn't work, it will be semiauto handguns and rifles altogether. Then revolvers pump shotguns and lever actions.

Maybe there are better things we can be doing. I'm not opposed to background checks or training. But I don't think it wise to conflate those measures with the violence we've seen. Would those measures have changed anything in the recent shootings? This is the problem with dealing with gun issues after a tragic event (and is precisely why the anti-gun agenda chooses, like vultures, to politicize and capitalize on the sufferings of the victims). You can bring in all sorts of issues that have NOTHING to do with the tragedy but people will be more tolerant of having rights restricted because they want to be seen as being on the right side of doing SOMETHING. Even if the measures being discussed have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with how events transpired and wouldn't have changed a single thing that happened. That's the problem with the rhetoric coming out of the White House and out of so many politicians these days.

Sorry, I've just been pretty riled up all day.