Guy W. Farmer: President Obama, gun salesman

President Obama has sold more guns than the best gun salesman in America. That’s because gun sales spike every time Obama and his “progressive” allies advocate for more gun control legislation.

Back in 2009, shortly after Obama became president, gun manufacturers called him “the best gun salesman of all time” because the FBI recorded a 49 percent increase in background checks during the 2008 election week compared to the same period in 2007. And just last month more than 60,000 gun enthusiasts attended the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas.

“America is a culture of guns,” Silencer Co. CEO Josh Waldron, said in Las Vegas. “The president has done everything he can to pass anti-gun legislation . . . and hasn’t been able to do anything other than help our industry sell more guns than ever.” Thank you, Mr. President.

Gun sales have increased throughout Obama’s presidency, spiking even before 14 people were shot to death by two ISIS sympathizers in San Bernardino, Calif. On Black Friday last year the FBI set a new one-day record by conducting 185,345 background checks, a 5 percent increase over the same day in 2014. As we know, background checks correlate directly to gun sales.

Every time there’s a mass shooting in the U.S. President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other so-called progressive politicians call for more gun control, which sends thousands of Americans to their local gun stores. It’s an endless cycle that illustrates how out of touch Washington, D.C. is with the rest of the country. We can’t expect liberal East Coast politicians — and some on the Left Coast — to understand the gun culture of the West. Remember that awkward photo of Secretary of State John Kerry wearing a hunting vest and carrying a rifle during his failed 2004 campaign for the presidency? Frankly, he looked much more comfortable in a fancy windsurfing outfit.

I would be in favor of more gun control if I thought it would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people, but it doesn’t. It merely attempts to disarm law-abiding citizens who enjoy hunting and target shooting and want to own guns in order to protect themselves and their families.

Let’s use President Obama’s adopted hometown, Chicago, the Murder Capital of America, as a case study of the effectiveness of gun control. Although Chicago has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation, the city’s police department reported 468 murders last year, which was a 12.5 percent increase over the previous year. And there were 51 homicides in Chicago last month, the highest toll for the month since 2000. Police blamed widespread gang activity but at the same time the police department was under fire in the case of a black man, Laquan McDonald, who was shot to death by white cops.

As usual, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the local police department, but is that going to solve the out-of-control murder rate in Chicago? Not likely because most of Chicago’s murders are the result of black-on-black violence. Rather than address the obvious issue of black families without fathers, however, President Obama, his African-American attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, investigate the police and call for more gun control. Black leaders blamed Emanuel for McDonald’s death and called for the mayor’s resignation.

A recent police raid in a Chicago gang neighborhood resulted in 64 arrests and the seizure of $200,000 worth of drugs and 19 weapons. In my opinion Chicago needs tough policing rather than more gun control in order to stem the tide of gang violence.

Guy W. Farmer isn’t a Gun Guy.