In his first prime-time Oval Office address in five years, President Barack Obama on Sunday night used last week’s terrorist shootings in San Bernardino to push more gun-control schemes—again in a dishonest and misleading fashion. “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun,” Obama lectured, suggesting that such a law would have stopped the attack.
First of all, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s legislation that stalled in the Senate didn’t just ban gun sales to persons on the “no fly list”—but also on the FBI’s so-called “Terrorist Screening Database,” which contains 15 to 30 times as many names.
More importantly, as CNN reported, neither of the two terrorists killed in San Bernardino were on any list. So not only would Obama’s schemes not have prevented those crimes—they also would leave countless innocent Americans defenseless. That’s dishonest, and it’s indefensible.