Obama's Implicit Call for Gun Confiscation

Following the recent spree killing in Oregon, Obama made some public comments that bear closer examination. Obama is a Social Justice Warrior (SJW), so it is helpful to keep in mind three rules when dealing with SJWs: 1. SJWs always lie; 2. SJWs always double down; and 3. SJWs always project. Rule number 1 especially applies to Obama's speech.

Lie number one:

There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

Obama knows that most lies require some kernel of truth in order to be palatable. (See, e.g., Genesis 3:4-5, where Satan states a lie, followed by a statement that is mostly true). The truth here is that there is a gun roughly for every man, woman, and child in America. The rest of his comments are lies.

"States with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths." This is demonstrably false by even a quick look at headlines. For instance, The Chicago Tribune reported just a few days ago that September 2015 was the deadliest for Chicago in 13 years after seeing 60 homicides last month. Of course, Obama is being disingenuous because he relies on "gun deaths," which includes suicides, rather than only homicides (which is how most people would interpret the term).* So, while states with high gun ownership have more deaths (on a per capita basis), they, conversely, have the lowest gun homicide rates. For instance, the article I've linked to notes that Wyoming has one of the highest gun deaths (including suicides), but a gun homicide rate of effectively 0. This difference is important because gun control is premised on reducing homicide rates, which, as Britain's, Ireland's and Australia's example shows, were unaffected by strict gun laws. (In looking at violent crime rates, there is an even greater disconnect between gun control and violence, with Scotland taking top prize as the most violent developed nation in the world). However, while there seems to be lack of consensus, newer studies from Australia have shown that the Australian "gun buy back" does not appear to have had any impact on homicides or suicides because murders and suicides were already declining. (PDF of the referenced study). On a larger scale, looking at other countries, there appears to be no relationship between suicide rates and access to firearms. There also seems to be little correlation between strict gun control laws and lower homicide rates.  I would suggest that if there was a clean correlation as Obama suggests, and given the number of firearms in the United States, the result should be that the United States have, by a large margin, the highest homicide and suicide rates in the world, when, in fact, it does not. And although the United States has more of these types of shootings than other "advanced" countries, it is a factor of the size of our population: when looking at per capita rates, the United States trails Norway, Finland, and Sweden. As for his last comment, concerning criminals obtaining firearms by other means, one merely needs to look at Australia again, which only a few days ago witnessed a terrorist attack by a gun armed 15-year old.

What should be more concerning is the following comment from Obama's lecture:

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.

However, the Administration won't expressly say what it would like to do. This is because it is unwilling to publicly admit that they are seeking gun confiscation. An article at The Federalist, entitled "The Australia Gun Control Fallacy" explains the reticence. First, although Australia termed its confiscation program as a "gun buyback," it was mandatory, not voluntary.

Second, Obama and his ilk realize (or should) that such a program would not work in the United States. As the author explains:

Gun confiscation is not happening in the United States any time soon. But let’s suppose it did. How would it work? Australia’s program netted, at the low end, 650,000 guns, and at the high end, a million. That was approximately a fifth to a third of Australian firearms. There are about as many guns in America as there are people: 310 million of both in 2009. A fifth to a third would be between 60 and 105 million guns. To achieve in America what was done in Australia, in other words, the government would have to confiscate as many as 105 million firearms.

The 310 million guns in America are not owned by 310 million Americans. Just how many Americans own guns, though, is controversial. The General Social Survey shows gun ownership on a four-decade downward trajectory, to 32 percent of households in 2015. A 2011 Gallup poll, on the other hand, found gun ownership at a two-decade high, with 47 percent of Americans stating they possessed a firearm. ... Moreover, and this is the key point, those rates, however the surveys are conducted, have been static for at least 15 years, while background checks have soared.

A third to a half of the U.S. population translates to 105 to 160 million people. A fifth to a third of guns is 60 to 105 million. Now that we see what is required for an American buyback scheme to work on an Australian scale, we can at last we confront the question gun-control advocates never ask, let alone answer: how do you take 60 to 105 million firearms from 105 to 160 million Americans? The answer to that question is the answer to the question of whether the Australian example really is valid for America after all. If the experience of “blue” states which introduced gun regulations that have nearly universal approval on the Left is any indication, liberals are likely to experience keen disappointment.

The author goes on to document the massive civil disobedience that has followed firearm and magazine bans in New York and Connecticut, two the "bluest" states in the nation.

... If New York and Connecticut won’t go along, what do they expect would happen in “red” states?Progressives will not answer that question because they never ask it, not even to themselves, lest somehow they say it out loud. On guns, the Left is incoherent, even insincere. It won’t say what it wants because what it wants is “a nonstarter politically, unfeasible in reality, and, by the way, completely unconstitutional”—that is, confiscation on the Australian model.Liberals refuse to confront the implications of their Australian dream because doing so would force them to give that dream up. Those implications are easy to spell out, though. A national gun buyback law would turn a significant portion of the American people into criminals. Residents of New York and Connecticut snubbed their new laws. The other 48 states are not New York and Connecticut. Civil disobedience on a national scale would ensue.

The only way to enforce such a law would be through door-to-door enforcement: sending armed men to take guns from other armed men.

... A federal law, therefore, would require sweeping, national police action involving thousands of lawmen and affecting tens of millions of people. If proponents of gun control are serious about getting guns out of Americans’ hands, someone will have to take those guns out of Americans’ hands.

... Let there be no doubt. Gun confiscation would have to be administered by force of arms. I do not expect that those who dismissed their fellow citizens for clinging bitterly to their guns are so naive that they imagine these people will suddenly cease their bitter clinging when some nice young man knocks on their door and says, “Hello, I’m from the government and I’m here to take your guns.” As though somehow those who daily espouse their belief that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow citizens to resist government oppression and tyranny will not use the Second Amendment to resist what they see as government oppression and tyranny. Or maybe they are so naive.

... When someone says the United States ought to adopt Australia’s gun laws as its own, he is really saying the cause of gun control is so important that he is willing to impose these laws even at the cost of violent insurrection. Make no mistake, armed rebellion would be the consequence. Armed men would be dispatched to confiscate guns, they would be met by armed men, and blood would be shed. Australia is a valid example for America only if you are willing for that blood to be spilled in torrents and rivers. To choose Australia is to choose civil war.

....  Civil war and a tattered Constitution: such are the consequences of invoking “Australia.” It is not a model; it is a mirage.

 *Update (Oct. 5, 2015): Liberty Unyielding notes that this study is flawed.