Helmke's growing discontent with the Obama administration

I've written a lot (One hundred days in: citizen disarmament lobby is getting restless, Brady Campaign rhetoric then and now: what a difference six months makes, and More disappointment for the Brady Campaign) about the Brady Campaign's growing impatience with the Obama administration's reticence, so far, with regard to the radical agenda of forcible citizen disarmament favored by the Brady Bunch. I'm starting to think it's becoming quite a sore point with Mr. Helmke, because last week, he expressed his disappointment in, and impatience with, the Obama administration yet again.

Yes, the president has a lot on his plate. Yet not only did then-Senator Obama contemplate this heavy workload, he campaigned for it. As a presidential candidate, he famously said last September, "It's going to be part of the president's job to be able to deal with more than one thing at once."

Keeping this in mind, there is an immediate economic and public health crisis in America that, so far, both the president and Congress have chosen to ignore: approximately 12,000 gun homicides, 17,000 gun suicides, 650 accidental gun deaths, plus 70,000 non-fatal gun injuries occur every year in this country.

Yet rather than propose concrete action that makes it harder for dangerous people to get firearms -- while still respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners -- all Washington can seem to muster after high-profile shootings are "thoughts and prayers" for the victims and their families.

For his part, the president has also included sincere expressions of "deep sadness" at these tragic losses -- though without any call to change any of our policies to prevent those losses.

Paul then goes on to list several tragic shootings that had a high enough profile to warrant public statements from Obama (statements that clearly did not go far enough, in Helmke's view).

Interestingly, one of the incidents Helmke mentioned was the tragedy at Camp Victory, Iraq, in which an unhinged soldier suddenly turned his gun on eight fellow soldiers (killing five), before being taken into custody (Helmke erroneously states that the killer then committed suicide--he did not).

As with the other shootings about which Obama expressed sadness, Helmke claims that "being 'deeply saddened' at gun violence is not enough"--that Obama should join the Brady Campaign in attempting to exploit these murders in furtherance of the agenda to disarm people who have not killed anyone. So what does Helmke want--soldiers to be disarmed?

Anyway, back to Helmke:

Yet up to now, President Obama has been unwilling to do much more than express his deep sadness and send his thoughts and prayers to victims and their families in response to shooting after shooting in this country, repeating gun lobby rhetoric that we should just "enforce the laws on the books," and sidestepping the fact that there are only a handful of Federal laws which make it harder for dangerous people to get guns.

He has yet to offer even a hint of his commitment after the Northern Illinois killings "to do whatever it takes" to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.

I have little doubt that the Obama administration will eventually show it's true colors, and make a concerted effort to pass more draconian gun laws. In the meantime, though, it's fun as hell to observe the increasing stridency of Helmke and friends.