For instance, the President believes there are "internet loopholes" and "gun show loopholes." He claims that "violent felons can buy… a weapon over the internet with no background check.” His contention is wrong, and what he describes already is illegal. Sales over the internet through licensed dealers must be shipped to a licensed dealer, and the buyer must pass a background check. The background checks apply to gun shows as well.
The President claims to be in favor of "the right to keep and bear arms." Maybe he is, but he supported local laws prohibiting handguns in the possession of private citizens, and came out in favor of a ban on the "manufacture, sale and possession of handguns."
The President uses the term "gun violence" without pointing out that suicides account for roughly two-thirds of the number and that justified self-defense, accidents and "line-of-duty" shootings by police account make up a good part of the remainder. He also didn't note that The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council estimates that there are somewhere between 500,000 to more than 3 million defensive gun uses per year. We suspect that is an underestimate, and that the presence of guns indirectly prevents many more crimes than that. Guns, obviously, are used to thwart, prevent or deter criminals in staggering numbers each year, leading us to infer that if private citizens were not able to protect themselves with guns, a great many more of us would be victims of crime.
The President was confronted in his CNN Town hall by Kimberly Corban, a rape survivor. She suggested that his executive actions might make it more difficult for people like her to purchase a firearm for protection. The President downplayed her concerns and claimed that “nothing we have proposed” would make it harder for her to acquire a firearm. He was dismissive, stating that she had to be “pretty well-trained” in order to use a gun to protect herself, and that having “a firearm in the home [could] lead to a tragic accident.” Despite the President’s claims, increased gun ownership has accompanied a sharp drop in crime and in murder.
The President claims that “it is easier to buy a gun than to buy "food” in certain neighborhoods, but to trade in food requires neither a background check nor a federal license. To trade in guns does.
But these points and others can be argued to exhaustion. The real flaw in the President’s argument is that “the gun” does not commit the crime, the person using it does. Control the criminals by jailing them and keeping them off the streets and you take a giant step to keep neighborhoods safe. If the President really wants to do something positive, he could pledge to support tougher prosecutions and longer sentences for violent criminals, but he, typical of many politicians, has spent his entire professional career excusing criminal behavior by blaming it on outside forces, such as poverty, ignorance, racism, or lack of opportunity – or by blaming the firearm – instead of conceding that crime is caused by criminals and that they, and not “society” or "guns," should be held responsible for their crimes.