Fighting Gun Owners, Ignoring ISIS

We should probably get one thing straight. It’s not the case that President Barack Obama is doing literally nothing about the threat posed by ISIS—or ISIL, or Daesh, or whatever you prefer to call the murderous thugs trying to carve out their own state amidst the ruins of Syria and Iraq. It’s simply that he’s expending far more effort, and far greater manpower, trying to disarm Americans. 

As the Washington Examiner pointed out, the president is looking to hire 430 agents—200 for ATF, 230 for FBI—to help promote his gun-control agenda. On the other hand, he is only going to deploy 50-200 special operations forces to battle ISIS, with the number of commandos probably right around 50. How is it that the right to bear arms protected by our Second Amendment causes our president to rage, weep and hurl insults on live television, yet an apocalyptic cult that routinely murders members of other religions—and plenty of Muslims, too—ranks only the tiniest military commitment? 

It’s not that we’re calling for an invasion—foreign policy recommendations outside the sphere of gun rights are not what this publication is about. Yet it has been convincingly argued that ISIS is more vulnerable to conventional military strikes than other foes like al-Qaeda. Regardless of what methods we use to fight the terrorists, one might reasonably expect that our president would move them to the top of his agenda. No such luck: The man who once famously referred to ISIS as a “JV team” seems never to have stopped underestimating their threat. But a nation full of law-abiding gun owners? That apparently terrifies him. The man who once famously referred to ISIS as a “JV team” seems never to have stopped underestimating their threat. But a nation full of law-abiding gun owners? That apparently terrifies him.

It would be one thing to say that guns take up too much of the president’s attention in comparison to a rampaging army whose ideology and tactics represent an entirely new strain of Islamist extremism. But our biggest problem lies in the fact that in the face of an unprecedented threat, our nation’s leader is working to make us more vulnerable. 

Look at Garland, Texas, where two apparent ISIS sympathizers attempted to shoot up a controversial art exhibit. A lightly armed traffic cop stopped two would-be killers in their tracks. This is not the first such attack halted by an armed American. Attacks by militant killers in Fort Hood, Chattanooga and San Bernardino achieved a degree of success largely because their victims were unarmed.

Compare these incidents to the coordinated attacks in Paris, where gunmen rampaged through the city taking dozens of lives. Or examine some of the other mass shootings that have taken place around the world. It cannot be doubted that—no matter how effective our military, police and border controls may be—our greatest defense against foreign and domestic terrorists is our armed citizenry. 

President Obama isn’t just failing to take the threat of terrorism seriously enough. This is a man who once reportedly stated that he didn’t want anyone to own guns. He would certainly be more comfortable if Americans went about their daily business unarmed. His utopia is a country in which every city street would be a shooting gallery for ISIS-affiliated terrorists. 

Our nation faces threats today that are unlike any it has encountered in history. That is why it is essential that the president’s gun-control crusade be stopped—and why the next president must be a friend of freedom. This is not only about our rights, it’s about our survival.