The Patriot Post® · Announcing Record Gun Sales for 2016

Founding Father Patrick Henry once warned, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

And in his 1996 book, “The Vision of the Anointed,” Thomas Sowell describes the pattern by which liberal elites impose their leftist policy aims — first convincing the masses a grave problem exists, then miraculously providing the Big Government solution. In other words, approaching the jewel of Liberty to take it. “[W]e’re hyped to believe that something is a terrible crisis for which something must be done,” Sowell said, “And what[‘s] … fascinating to me … is that very often the thing that’s said to be in crisis has often been getting better for years on end, but that gets ignored.”

It’s as though Sowell foresaw the Obama administration.

After nearly doubling the national debt, driving up health care premiums to unaffordable levels, wielding his pen with one hand while giving Congress the finger with the other, and, oh yes, “containing” the Islamic State, Obama is turning his final year’s attention to eviscerating the Second Amendment. That’s right, he’s set his sights on gun control.

He must be hoping the climate will change.

In an interview published this week in GQ magazine, Obama said, “The main thing that I’ve been trying to communicate over the last several of these horrific episodes is that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are not more violent than people in other developed countries. But they have more deadly weapons to act out their rage. … I will do everything I can to make sure that there’s a sustained attention paid to this thing.”

That’s certainly in line with his June 2014 lament about his supposed greatest frustration: “the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.”

How does this fulfill Sowell’s prophecy? Well, contrary to Obama’s rhetoric meant to hype Americans into believing gun violence is a terrible crisis about which something must be done (i.e., rights must be surrendered), gun violence has actually seen a major decline in America over the past two decades.

The Daily Signal reports some heartening statistics: “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.”

And while gun control proponents claim gun violence victimizes 33,000 Americans each year, they conveniently leave out that two-thirds of these gun deaths are suicides.

Little wonder that Americans believe gun violence is on the rise. Indeed, a 2013 Pew research poll found 56% of Americans thought gun violence was higher at polling time than 20 years earlier, while just 12% thought (accurately) that it was lower.

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll from last month found 70% of Americans believe crime in general is on the rise. And this, Gallup noted, “[d]espite government data showing declining violent crime rates in the U.S. over the past two decades.”

But who needs facts when fiction is much more conducive to one’s agenda? And Obama is dead set on using his last year in office to disarm as many Americans as he can. See for example his citation of the Australia model of gun confiscation.

Of course, few things drive Constitution-loving Americans to become gun-owning (or multiple-gun-owning) Americans more quickly than the threat of increased gun control.

Indeed, since Obama took office, gun production has more than doubled, rising 140% to 10.8 million in 2013. By comparison, the number of guns manufactured increased by 18% during the Bush administration and decreased by 9% under Clinton.

But sure, Obama, please continue your alarmist talk about guns — it’s already proven an amazingly effective way to arm the American people.