Anti-Gun Advocates Use Sneaky Language

After today’s first meeting of President Obama’s gun control task force, created after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said that they’re not pushing to take guns away from law-abiding citizens:

After meeting with Vice President Biden on Wednesday, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said consensus is developing around broadening and strengthening criminal background checks for gun purchasers as part of a comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence.

“But comprehensive, words like ‘comprehensive’ and ‘broad’ don’t mean taking guns away from law-abiding citizens,” Dan Gross told reporters outside the West Wing. “They are genuinely committed very hearteningly to that idea…staking out that middle ground that clearly exists.”

That might be reassuring at first blush, but let’s remember that today’s prohibitionists learned a lesson from alcohol prohibition. Outright bans and confiscation don’t work.

Rather, they know that the most effective approach is to harass gun owners, and would-be gun owners, with endless regulation and enforcement that makes buying, owning, transporting and carrying a firearm all but impossible.

So are Obama and his allies in the anti-gun movement going to push for legislation to confiscate guns, and ban new sales? Almost certainly not. Are we going to see them push for huge amounts of new red tape that complicates gun sales, purchases and possession in the hopes that Americans give up trying to exercise their 2nd amendment rights?

Absolutely.