As far as I know no one in the national mainstream media has pointed it out, though it is difficult to believe that at least some members are smart enough to recognize the gun control game President Obama and his closest advisers are playing.

One cannot expect that someone as infatuated with Obama as Chris Matthews, whose legs started tingling again on election eve in November and haven’t stopped tingling yet, would understand what’s going on.

But surely someone as learned as Bawa Walters or Anderson Cooper must realize that the Obama gun control game is larger than it seems, which is first to take as many guns as possible away from citizens and, second, to stop the manufacture of new ones.

But BW, AC and that other example of royalty, the Englishman Piers Morgan, must also know that the major thrust for Obama and his fellow intellectual elites lies in controlling people, not guns. To that extent, they agree with the slogan, “People, not guns, kill people.”

Obama realizes that, even though the path to socialism in America is pretty well greased, there may be a few citizens who would rebel if a powerful move is initiated to confiscate all guns. There may be hundreds of citizens who have access to arms who would battle with any troops sent to raid homes and places of business seeking guns.

“There won’t be a problem identifying gun owners,” said a top White House aide, who declined to be named because, he said, he usually doesn’t know what’s going on and is likely wrong.

Aside from using sales lists from gun stores, the government believes it can rely on a network of citizen spies to track down gun owners. Bonuses of $1,000 could be paid to anyone who correctly identifies a neighbor as a gun owner. And, there is likely to be a clause in the Affordable Health Care Act, requiring doctors to report any signs of potential violence in a patient. In addition, a bounty of $500 could be paid to anyone turning in a gun.

“Greed is what got Obama reelected,” the know-nothing aide said, “and greed will get the guns away from people.”

However, even if Obama resorts to vastly expanding the number of Department of Homeland Security troops and the United Nations sends in blue-helmeted troops, there is likely to still be hundreds of thousands of weapons on the loose.

But Obama and his advisers are betting that locking up people who shouldn’t own or carry guns will remove the last vestige of gun violence.

There is a reason that Obama’s recent proposal to Congress includes mandatory background checks for all gun buyers and more money for mental health, says my good friend and adviser, Theodon Tearon Tuttler, of Walla Walla, Oregon.

TTT notes that the federal government has in its arsenal an army of mental health experts who are just as eager as lawyers to join the Obama legions and get rich in the process.

TTT, who is seldom right and is not to be trusted, tells me that the watchword among some White House advisers and from George Clooney, Obama’s closest civilian adviser, is: “You can control guns only by controlling people.”

Putting people away in institutions is as natural to a modern progressive liberal as it was to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, TTT said. Who knows better whether a person should be allowed to own or carry a gun than a well-educated liberal? TTT says some experts think that there may be at least 30 million people in the United States who shouldn’t be allowed to own or carry a gun.

Putting aside the effort’s benefits in removing threats from guns, institutionalizing millions of people will also be a big boost for the economy; it may do to this sluggish economy what World War II did for the Great Depression. Thousands more shrinks will need to be trained, hundreds of secure institutions will need to be built, and staff trained to run them.

Thousands and thousands of mental cases who are financially able to hire lawyers and judges may avoid being locked in padded walls.

But, alas, the rank and file won’t be as lucky. However, Obama will show that he cares for the “little people.” He will make sure that they have enough numbing medicine to make imprisonment tolerable.