For what it’s worth, President Obama has done a fairly decent job seeking out the change he wants in this country during the last stretch of his final term; he’s been able to help rename indigenous landmarks to their native title, and he put out efforts to help reverse global climate change.
These issues on the liberal agenda are more or less progressive and help lead America into a state of awareness that has, for a long time, been put off by conservative ignorance.
Yet, there is one issue that seems to have set both sides of the US bipartisan into a tizzy: gun control.
The constitution is clear in saying that citizens have the right to bear arms, but what’s the limit? More so, what’s the limit on political powers overly possessing the country’s firearms? It’s a sticky situation that has sparked debates and concerns tenfold during this 2016 election season.
In Obama’s first weekly address of 2016, he stated that he wants to take unilateral action to face the gun control dilemma.
This is something that many US citizens have feared, especially on the republican side; our President using his executive power to gain more gun control, and even coming from a die-hard liberal, this is a terrible plan of action.
In the address, Obama admitted that his grappling with congressional backing on what he calls “common sense gun laws” was and is his greatest frustration during the Presidency.
It’s understandable that the lofty idea of taking all the guns away in order to scale back the exponential number of homicides involving guns is tempting, but to use unauthorized executive power to get it done is highly unconstitutional and reckless.
During the 90’s, Australia had a similar problem with mass shootings, and so the government simply took away a majority of the guns from sellers so that the physical number of guns is decreased, leading to a near 100 percent drop in shooting incidents. People turn to this statistic and wonder if it’ll work for the US. In short, it won’t.
With the struggles of a massive population and a majority of the population clinging to one constitutional clause that they must absolutely have a gun, the US could not possibly recall the guns and expect an easy win. Obama should not be able to use this kind of executive power to restrict firearms, even if there’s an epidemic at hand. That’s at the hands of the American people and the democratic system we have in place.