Headline: Obama says gun control to be top issue of final year

The Washington Times is reporting that President Obama is now publicly admitting that he hopes to make gun control the top issue of his final year in office, saying Americans aren’t more violent than other people but they “have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”

From the article:

In an interview published Tuesday in GQ magazine, Mr. Obama said easy access to guns is “the only variable” between the U.S. and other developed countries.

“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,” Mr. Obama said. “But they have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”

Asked by interviewer Bill Simmons of HBO if gun control will be the “dominant” issue on his agenda next year, Mr. Obama replied, “I hope so.”

“We have this weird habit in this culture of mourning and, you know, 48, 72 hours of wall-to-wall coverage, and then … suddenly we move on,” Mr. Obama said. “And I will do everything I can to make sure that there’s a sustained attention paid to this thing.”

The article notes that the president has begun to speak out about gun regulations more forcefully in recent months, following mass killings at "no-guns" victim zones in South Carolina and Oregon. He said in the magazine article that the aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in December 2012 was “the worst few days of my presidency."

The massacre in Newtown was indeed horrific, but one is left to wonder if a commander in chief whose administration suffered the first ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979 in Benghazi, at least four attacks on "no-guns" military facilities here in the U.S., as well as a deadly bombing at the Boston marathon, has his priorities entirely in line.

The article with Obama's comments about Democrats' failure to capitalize on the Sandy Hook massacre by passing gun control:

“We knew it was a stretch, just because of the politics of Congress and the NRA. But we had to try,” Mr. Obama said. “In the absence of a movement politically in which people say, ‘Enough is enough,’ we’re going to continue to see, unfortunately, these tragedies take place.”

Judging by a recent Gallup poll, such a political movement favoring the type of restrictions on the right to bear arms the president dreams of isn't likely to come any time soon.

A recently-released Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans, 56%, believe that if more Americans carried concealed weapons after passing a criminal background check and training course, the country would be safer. Even more encouraging, the data shows that younger people would feel the most safe, with 66 percent of adults aged 18-29 agreeing with the question.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.