Answering the Critics of Obama on Guns

Yesterday, President Obama unveiled executive actions that are aimed at lowering gun violence in America. They are actions on regulating internet and "unregulated" gun sales, funding more mental health help, and forcing the reporting of lost and stolen guns during shipping, to name some. For most Americans, these are actions that make common sense. For others, the sky is falling, and we are on the road to the erosion of rights. Obviously both are not correct, and as is usually the case, this comes down to whether or not you've paid any attention to what he is doing here. A few points:

1. Yes, the President's actions expand background checks, and that is good. Let's be clear here, if you can't pass a background check on every gun sale, I don't want you to own a gun. This isn't very complicated. By forcing more internet gun dealers and other "unregulated" gun dealers to be licensed, the President is forcing them under laws on background checks. There's nothing illegal about regulating. In this case, regulating leads to a desired result. This is good.
2. There is no confiscation of guns from legal gun owners. None. In year number eight, after debating this to death, at no point has President Obama "come for your guns." That's not even in the realm of possibility, discussion, or reality. Much like Bill Clinton before him, the NRA has attacked this President and stoked fears of a "gun grab" coming, and much like President Clinton, it never happened. I'm not sure why the NRA says their members should "stand and fight," because there's no enemy coming to fight against.
3. We finally have real attention to mental health issues. Since the Newtown Massacre, we've heard Republicans float serious action on mental health as an alternative to gun control. They have yet to take any serious action on the matter. With this set of executive orders, President Obama has taken serious action to help keep the mentally ill away from guns, and in treatment. Hopefully Congress will now act too.
4. Yes, gun control is constitutional. At no point in it's history has the Second Amendment been absolute. At it's inception, it was applied to a "well-regulated militia," which was the public because we had no strong military or police force in our early days. As time went on, it was applied with limitations, much as all of the amendments are, including the first. Even today, with the most pro-gun Supreme Court Justice of all-time, Antonin Scalia, writing the last major Second Amendment legal opinion, he recognizes that the government can place restrictions on certain types of guns, and certain types of dangerous people.
5. I can't believe that all lost guns weren't reported already. Think about that for a second. A gun is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. If your car goes missing, you report it. Hell, if anything goes missing, you report it. Why not a gun? This seems to me to be a common sense thing. I can't believe this is controversial at all.
6. Yes, the President cried, yes, it's real, and yes, that's fine. Human beings are allowed to be emotional, especially when talking about how an issue personally reaches them. President Obama has had to greet hundreds of family members who were victims of gun violence and console them. He's had to hear their stories, and look at the pictures of their loved ones. Yes, it bothers him. If it didn't, I'd be more worried.
7. The NRA's attacking response is incoherent drivel. According to the NRA, President Obama's executive actions are irrelevant. They won't stop anything, they say. If they are so inconsequential, why bother to sue? Who is the victim they are suing to represent? People who fail background checks? I'm not sure exactly who it is the NRA is claiming to represent, other than manufacturers that want no regulations at all.
8. Congress has had ample opportunity to act. Yes, the President is acting without the Congress, that's obvious to me. He's doing so because the Congress failed to do anything at all. The position of the Congress, or at least the Republicans within it, is that we have no issue with gun violence in this country. There is no other way to interpret their failure to pass anything.
9. Yes, the President has the legal authority to issue executive actions. This is pretty straight forward, yet still needs to be stated. The President is allowed to use executive orders to issue regulations. No, Congress does not have to fund them. Yes, Congress can vote to explicitly block them (though he'd have to sign the law). Yes, the next President can repeal his actions. Even so, the President is allowed to create law this way. Parts of these orders will need Congressional action, action that I doubt will happen with the deadbeat Congress we have. Even so, there's nothing illegal about a President instructing federal agencies on how to enact the law.
10. No, none of these actions or others would stop all gun violence. That's true as gospel. The pro-gun nuts tell us all the time how gun control measures wouldn't stop this shooting or that one. They're right. Background checks wouldn't stop all shootings, nor would bans on certain types of guns or ammo, or even more prosecutions, harsher prosecutions, and more cops. Nothing short of 100% confiscation would stop all shootings. No one's willing to pay the price of that, in dollars, freedom, manpower or energy. Confiscation isn't going to happen, so no action would stop all shootings. If an action stops one or two though, that's one or two lives that we save. That's well worth the action's price.

And with that, I think I've said my peace.