RUSH: Let me take you back to this program November 23rd last year.
RUSH ARCHIVE: We’re fast approaching Obama’s last year in office. I want to warn you again, in all likelihood, there are going to be things this president does in the next 12 months that you can’t even think of or conceive of now. It’s his last chance to have personal stamps or fingerprints on the transformation of this country. He knows nobody’s gonna stop him. He knows the Republicans have taken impeachment — i’s late for that anyway. There’s not gonna be any effort to stop him. The Republicans are looking beyond Obama and focusing on trying to win the White House themselves and they’ve just chalked it up, whatever happens this next year happens, and Obama knows all that.
RUSH: And right on cue: “Obama Set to Unveil Curbs on Gun Sellers Via Executive Action.” He is going to make another end run around Congress in the ongoing liberal quest to separate you, the law-abiding, from your guns. “Obama’s bid to assert himself in his final year will begin with long-awaited executive actions on gun control, expected to be released next week,” and right on schedule, there’s CNN. CNN has announced they’re gonna host an Obama town hall on guns in America. It’s gonna happen this Thursday, and they’re gonna make it appear like there is popular support in the country for Obama to take executive action on limiting guns and their legal sale and use in this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So Obama is going to announce executive actions and orders to impact negatively the free flow of guns and ammunition in our culture, basically. This has been long a quest of the American left, and he doesn’t care about Congress. He doesn’t care about doing it constitutionally. That doesn’t matter. The transformation of the country is all that matters. He’s got one year left, and this is just item number one, and I’m telling you that the things that are yet to come this year will be anything about lame duck in status, and you have yet to be shocked to the degree you’re gonna be as this year unfolds.
“The White House is putting finishing touches on several measures in an effort to make progress on curbing gun violence…” There’s nothing they can do to curb gun violence. They’ve shown it. They run Chicago. They run Detroit. They can’t do a thing to curb gun violence. They don’t have the slightest idea how. In fact, as Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association once said back during the Clinton years, they profit from the violence. They’re comfortable with a certain level of violence because it encourages supporters of this kind of unilateral action.
The more violence, the more frustration, the more people raise their hands in frustration and say, “Go ahead,” relying on the federal government to do things that it was never intended to do and can’t do, particularly when populated by leftists who are incompetent. I mean, they’re incompetent from the standpoint that what they believe doesn’t work, and the evidence is daily on display. “According to gun industry insiders and others familiar with the proposals, the changes [that Obama’s going to make] include requiring an expanded number of small-scale gun sellers to be licensed — and therefore conduct background checks — whenever selling a weapon.
“This wouldnÂ’t close the so-called gun show loophole, though it has the potential to narrow it. The [Regime] is also expected to impose tighter rules for reporting guns that get lost or stolen on their way to a buyer.” Now, keep in mind that nothing they are going to do… All of the guns used in recent mass shootings were purchased legally, and after background checks, and none of what Obama is going to do would have stopped any of that. By definition, gun control will not stop crime. And that’s what we’re talking about.
But, no! The left isn’t talking about crime. They’re talking about removing guns from the hands of innocent people, which is the only thing they’ll be able to accomplish. They’re not gonna be able to get criminals to turn over their guns to them. They can pass law after law after law, and, by definition, people that want to get guns illegally are gonna break those laws, whatever they are, to get them. And everybody understands this. So the objective here isn’t to stop crime. The objective isn’t to curb gun violence, because none of this could do that.
Those are cultural problems that go far deeper than the fact that guns are on the street, that guns are available for sale. The fact that guns exist does not explain criminal behavior. The fact that guns and ammunition exist does not explain why people grow up with no value base whatsoever, with no respect for life whatsoever. The fact that guns exist has nothing to do with that. Now, right on schedule here comes CNN promising to host an Obama town hall on guns in America. Here’s how CNN reports it.
“President Barack Obama is mounting a final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy…” Just like Obamacare: Make it worse, but be the first to do it and have your legacy be, “The first president, only president ever to reform America’s health care system!” Never mind the fact that it didn’t need this kind of reform. Same thing. Legacy! First president ever to do whatever it took to do whatever the left wants done on guns, so can have a legacy for historians to talk about the greatness of Obama.
The end result means everybody is at greater risk. Safety goes out the window, because the only people affected by this are the law-abiding and the quote/unquote innocent. Obama “will join CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday for an exclusive one-hour live town hall on gun control at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in hopes of mounting a final pitch to the public.” The public has nothing to do with this! Ninety-eight percent of the people could oppose it and he’s still gonna do this.
In fact, I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a Gallup poll that shows only 2% of the people say guns and gun control are among the nation’s most important problems. “As President Obama prepares to announce new executive actions on gun control Monday, a newly released Gallup Poll shows that “guns/gun control” ranked near the bottom of Americans’ most pressing concerns in 2015. ” You know what’s right next, too? Climate change/global warming.
Now, it’s interesting. What are the two things Obama seems hell-bent on focusing on? Two things nobody cares about! That’s one of the reasons he’s doing it. If nobody cares about it, nobody’s gonna be paying attention to it. He’s gonna have even more freedom, leeway, and latitude to do whatever it is he intends to do because he’s tackling things about which the American people don’t care much. Now, don’t be misled — and I’m not either. This poll does not say that only 2% of the people care whether or not the government wants to take their guns away.
What the poll says is only 2% of the people think that guns and gun control are issues of importance that they ought to be factors in the presidential race. And even fewer percentage of people think this about climate change. It doesn’t matter. The point is Obama takes advantage of the fact that people don’t think those are important issues, the theory being if nobody’s paying attention, you have an even greater opportunity to do what you want to do. “According to Gallup, only 1% of respondents mentioned guns and gun control as a concern for most of the months in 2015.” Now, what Gallup could be doing here…
In fact, if somebody were to tell me this, I would have no doubt about it. They’re trying to put out in this poll that people don’t care that Obama may take their guns away. “Ah, if he does it, so what? I don’t care. One percent, 2%.” That’s not what this poll, obviously, ’cause that isn’t true. That question is not asked. If you asked the question, 
“Do you support the president’s efforts to remove guns and ammunition from the hands of innocent people, in violation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution?” you’re gonna get a far different answer than 2%.
What the respondents in this poll are saying is that all of this that’s happening as a result of the crime and so forth is does not rank near the top of things concerning them as we head into a presidential election year. I think it’d be a mistake to look at this poll and suggest that, you know, somebody needs to tell Obama nobody cares about this. Nobody. Nobody cares; he ought to leave this alone. That’s precisely why he’s zeroing in on it. Fewer people are paying attention, and it doesn’t mean people don’t care about it.
It simply means there are things of vastly greater importance to them in this, a presidential election year. Again, none of what Obama claims to want to accomplish can be accomplished by this, because the guns are not the problem. The existence of guns, guns in shows, guns in stores, guns in people’s homes are not why people pick up those guns and start shooting them at innocent people. If gun control really worked, why are we allowing the Iranians to nuke up? I mean, you want to talk about a gun?
A nuclear weapon is a gun extraordinaire, and Obama’s going out of his way to make sure that the Iranians have a stockpile of them. Now, if the existence of guns– in this case nuclear weapons — is what causes the problem, why in the world let a regime like that have them? The answer is even Obama understands that what he’s saying isn’t true, that the existence of guns is why there is crime committed with them. But the point is, it doesn’t matter what you think anyway; Obama is going to do this.
Because the real objective here is the further erosion of liberty and freedom. But even more, it’s the more Obama and the left can render the Constitution irrelevant. You talk about an objective? You talk about something that would just make them orgasmic? If they could get the American people to the point where the Constitution is just some piece of paper over there that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, that’s what they would love. And to the effect that they can violate it, that they can avoid it, that they can pretend it doesn’t exist — that they can wantonly, in public, spit on it and get away with it — that’s the objective.
‘Cause these people are looking long term, and it’s further and truly about the transformation of this country away from the way it was founded and the way and the things about it that make it the greatest nation ever. Those characteristics, those fundamentals, those institutions, they are the target. Using guns and climate change and health care, things that scare people every day, that’s just the technique. That’s just the tactic that is being used to create the least amount of resistance to their actions that they can.