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A couple of observations on today’s events and their impact on political action:

The President punted. If you read the official releases of what Obama will do, as opposed to what the press is reporting, you will see that today was a publicity stunt. He is making several proclamations, issuing some instructions to federal agencies, and telling Congress to act on all the hard stuff. No assault weapon ban, no high cap magazine ban, no end to private gun sales including gun shows. He put these in the too hard box and told Congress to handle. That’s what the law requires, of course, but when did he ever pay attention to the law. He’s done this because he knows his position is weak. The real polling, not the nonsense that the press is touting, tells him that this is a losing issue so he is trying to fool his base by making a bunch of noise, but he won’t take action. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he realizes that the issue will hurt his cause.

If he knows it’s a losing issue then you can bet that Congress does as well. The Senate is not going to touch this either. They will honk and cough and strut around, but nothing will happen. Those poor folks in New York State and other liberal bastions will suffer, but the federal government won’t do much on the surface.

The biggest danger from the Feds is going to be in information gathering and sharing and in an attempt to expand the restrictions on gun ownership to a wide range of mental issues. Everyone can be proclaimed crazy, so that is a very real threat and will have to be watched carefully. You could conceivably go to the doctor for a flu shot and end up being declared a threat to society for some mental condition.

If Obama thought that he could have gotten away with it, he would have done much more today. The fact that he didn’t is telling.

Perfect analysis centurion. Obama punted big-time. He failed to even touch imports of arms, parts-kits and inexpensive ammo. And with existing precedent from Republican Presidents on curtailing those imports.