After failing to get his gun control bill passed by the Senate Wednesday, President Obama lashed out at his usual favorite targets, "the gun lobby" and Republicans.
He claimed "the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill." He scolded "senators [who] could not offer any good reason" to oppose the legislation. And sharing the stage with some of the heartbroken families from Newtown, Connecticut, he attacked Republicans as being unwilling to "protect the lives of all our children."
But who is really lying in the gun debate? Mr. Obama's case in favor of background checks rests on two false claims that he keeps repeating: “as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases take place without a background check” and that "background checks have kept more than 2 million dangerous people from buying a gun.” . . .In contrast to what I argue in my piece, Democrats are claiming that they tried everything. Possibly everything politically, but not everything in terms of actual policy. From Politico:
David Axelrod, sounding shell-shocked by the decisiveness of the Senate defeat on gun reform, said Obama is indeed frustrated by the constraints that bind him and knows that’s what he signed up for. “On this one, he tried everything,” Axelrod said. “It’s easy after a stinging defeat like this to say: ‘There’s no formula.’ But what you can’t do is take your bat and ball and go home.” . . .
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