Today as expected, President Obama issued a new executive order for gun control, bypassing Congress and challenging the limits of the President's Constitutional authority.

If you watched the opening of this announcement you probably noticed the political nature of the event. Not a solemn, national address on a serious matter. Instead, a high-fiving, smiling and applauding political rally. And, in his description of the new order, he joked. He joked about his age, losing his computer tablet and Obamacare. It is hard to accept his emotion around this issue when he does it in his usual political setting & tone.

But back to teh executive order. The new executive order has 4 key provisions. The four are listed below with associated concerns in italics.

1. Dealers must get a license.

- If you sell 1 or 2 guns, you are a dealer and must apply for a license. If you do not, you will be prosecuted. That includes sales to friends or relatives.

- Expanding background checks.

- More efficient background check process and hiring more people to streamline the process.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 already requires professional gun dealers to be licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Buyers of guns from federally licensed dealers are subject to background checks.

2. Effective enforcement of gun laws on books. Hire more agents, report lost or stolen guns and work with advocates of domestic abuse from gun violence.

The existing gun control law (1968) doesn’t clearly define what it means to be in the business of selling guns. Obama’s executive action would intend to clarify that distinction in a way that broadens who is in the gun-selling business, so that more sales are “on the books” and thus require a background check. Read mass gun registration for later confiscation. According to legal experts, Obama would be within his rights to pursue such an action because he would be simply reinterpreting how to apply already existing law, rather than creating new legislation.

3. Help mentally ill get the help they need. $500M budgeted for this effort. Mental health records will be submitted to background check systems.

OK, lets talk! But, beware, Are Climate Skeptics Too ‘Mentally Ill’ to Buy Guns Under Obama’s New Rules?

4. Boost gun safety technology.

Few would care if the “smart gun” debate was only about the emergence of proven, reliable guns theoretically capable of recognizing an “authorized” person. But the American free market is not a given in this debate; rather, gun control’s clammy grip is all over this technology. Still, the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for firearms manufacturers, have long since published statements on their websites clearly stating that they are not opposed to “smart guns,” but are opposed to laws that make such unproven technology mandatory. Beware of such executive overreach and from all gun control action/legislation that does nothing to fix an overhyped and out of focus problem. Additional context follows to help you understand concerns over anything the left does under the heading of sensible gun control to destroy the Second Amendment. Is there an epidemic of gun violence in the US. Are we, as some insist, in the midst of a gun violence crisis? Gun control advocates would certainly have you think so. A quick look into the facts reveals an entirely different picture. According to the FBI, in the past two decades, violent crime has been falling almost continuously. In 2013, the number of violent crimes perpetrated was 37 percent lower than it was just two decades earlier. In 1994, there were 23,326 murders in the United States; by 2013, that number had fallen to 14,196, an incredible 39-percent decline. More specifically, according to the Department of Justice, the number of firearm-related homicides declined from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. The Department of Justice further concludes that even non-fatal gun-related crimes are declining, dropping 69 percent between 1993 and 2011. The most significant factor may be the large-scale media coverage of and public interest in mass shootings. Americans are captivated by stories of mass shootings and have followed them closely. The simple fact is that horrific headlines, such as the number of children gunned down in a school, have a greater shock value than nearly any other kind of story. The media understand this. Seeking, as always, the highest ratings, media companies tend to disproportionately report on mass shootings. The result is biased news coverage that creates the perception that an uncommon event is in fact happening all the time. A Gallup poll conducted this year reports that 70 percent of Americans believe that crime is on the rise. Another Gun Control Claim Bites the Dust. the Washington Post gave Four Pinnochios to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) for repeating a claim originated by Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety group, that there has been an average of one school shooting per week since the December 2012 crime at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. “Applying a reasonable person standard” to what should be considered a “school shooting” in the context of the Sandy Hook crime, the Post concluded that of 126 incidents on Everytown’s list, most were suicides or attempted suicides, accidents, or shootings resulting from arguments between individuals, and perhaps only 10 were crimes in which someone intended to shoot multiple people. President referenced suicide gun violence as a reason for his actions. This is new tot he gun control argument because they have been caught lumping suicides into school and mass shootings gun violence numbers for hysterical affect, that he had to add the category to the discussion to improve accuracy. But, does the rate of US suicides "far exceeds other countries"? The suicide rate in the US ranks 50th. The Progressive Gun-Control Charade. After tragedy, politicians glibly call for unworkable reforms—then blame the ‘gun lobby’ when they fail. This interplay allows progressive politicians to claim they have no interest in gun confiscation, and still wax heroic about lost battles over glittery legislative proposals that in practice would not have prevented the crimes they purport to address. Everyone, across the political spectrum, should reject this kind of duplicity. Last month he praised Australia’s far-reaching gun-control efforts. In 1996, after a lunatic used a semiautomatic rifle to kill 34 people in Tasmania, the Australian government banned all semiautomatic rifles and repeating shotguns. Owners of these roughly 700,000 firearms (about a quarter of the country’s three million total guns) were required to turn them in for destruction. The government called this a “buyback,” but no one had a choice. This sort of confiscation effort would not work in the U.S. Americans own roughly 325 million guns, orders of magnitude more than any other country. The U.S. equivalent of the 700,000 guns confiscated in Australia would be many tens of millions of firearms, virtually none of which can be tracked to a particular owner. The Liberal Theology of Gun Control. Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them. Disarm the country while we are at war and under attack, Brilliant!! The spree killer, for reasons of drugs, mental illness, copy cat infamy, or whatever the cause, is not stopped by taking away your guns. Terrorists, who are trying to kill Americans and other peace loving people around the world, are not going to be stopped by taking away your guns - they will be elated! More soft targets. Because that is the only thing that both groups have in common, soft targets. Targets where they know they will get no defense. And, comparing San Bernardino to Newtown and other spree killings is not accurate either. Why isn't San Bernardino compared to Paris, or Fort Hood, or 9-11, or Pearl Harbor? They New York Times and other leftist media do this to keep the public from unifying around a common enemy, Islamic terrorism. Instead the Times says, "motives do not matter to the dead in California". Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous statement? And ironic, because the whole article in the Times is about their political motive for these shootings, guns. Remove guns and eliminate the motive that the dead obviously don't care about. WOW! The fact is the motive does matter to the dead and the living. But, not a political motive or agenda, a real one. This country has been at war with radical Islamic terrorists since 1996 when Osama Bin Laden declared war. You could argue we have been at war with radical Islamic terrorists since 1980 and the Iranian hostage crisis. But, yet, the left is too afraid to actually acknowledge that war has been declared on America. Instead they want to disarm us, while ignoring those who are trying to kill us on a daily basis. BRILLIANT!! To actually place this solution on the table is either the height of stupidity or a revolutionary strategy to destroy this country. You decide which, there is evidence of both. Armed Citizens or defenseless subjects. Freedom's Safest Place

When Obama Again Claims Mass Shootings Don’t Happen in Other Nations, One Tweet Wins the Internet. France would be surprised to hear this. Unfortunately, it is just not the case that mass shootings don’t happen in other nations. In November, Parisians found this sad fact out to their shock and horror when ISIS terrorists launched a series of armed attacks that led to over 130 innocent civilians killed. In January, armed Islamic extremists entered the building of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people and injured 11 others. Top 10 Nations in the World for Mass Shootings – What One Thing Jumps Out. The US ranks 6th. Bad, but much different than you are led to believe. The Dishonest Gun-Control Debate. The gun-control debate is one of the most dishonest arguments we have in American politics. It is dishonest in its particulars, of course, but it is in an important sense dishonest in general: The United States does not suffer from an inflated rate of homicides perpetrated with guns. The argument about gun control is at its root a way to put conservatives on the defensive about liberal failures, from schools that do not teach to police departments that do not police and criminal-justice systems that do not bring criminals to justice. The gun-control debate is an exercise in changing the subject. Lessons from Gun Control in the Third Reich. Turn the clock back further and focus on just one victim, a renowned German athlete. Alfred Flatow won first place in gymnastics at the 1896 Olympics. In 1932, he dutifully registered three handguns, as required by a decree of the liberal Weimar Republic. The decree also provided that in times of unrest, the guns could be confiscated. The government gullibly neglected to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, while political extremists and criminals would not. However, it did warn that the gun-registration records must be carefully stored so they would not fall into the hands of extremists. The ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power just a year later, in 1933. The Nazis immediately used the firearms-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state,” a euphemism for Social Democrats and other political opponents of all types. Police conducted search-and-seizure operations for guns and “subversive” literature in Jewish communities and working-class neighborhoods. By fall of 1938, the Nazis were ratcheting up measures to expropriate the assets of Jews. To ensure that they had no means of resistance, the Jews were ordered to surrender their firearms. … firearms were confiscated from all Jews registered as gun owners.In 1942, Flatow was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he starved to death. Today gun control crusaders such as Barack Obama and Dianne Feinstein ignore the Second Amendment and exploit tragedies from Columbine to Sandy Hook to promote their agenda of gun bans, restrictions, and registration regimes. Gun Control in the Third Reich provides a timely and long overdue historical perspective on the disastrous effects of disarming a population. Ted Cruz explains the 2nd Amendment in the context of background checks and gun registration schemes. These articles and more for your enlightenment are in this Gun Control section of The Gray Area.