It’s distressing to see a boy cry when he’s old enough to be a man. Yet my friend Barack Hussein’s tears were so convincing that even old cynical me couldn’t stop laughing.
What caused Obama’s lachrymose display was the 2012 shooting at a primary school in which 20 children and six adults were killed.
Of course the sole reason for that tragedy was the wide availability of guns, explained the president. And the real culprit wasn’t the chap who pulled the trigger but the pernicious gun lobby that had osmotically communicated the message that open season on children had started.
Hence there was only one thing left for old Barack Hussein to do: bypass Congress and introduce gun control measures through the back door, by executive order.
As a clinching argument, he volunteered the information that he had never owned a gun. Well, even though I’ve never owned a dog, I don’t think they ought to be banned, but then idiotic non sequiturs are the stock in trade of today’s politics.
The Republicans in Congress screamed bloody murder, as it were. They said the proposed measure was unconstitutional and I’d agree on general principle, what with a gaping deficit on my part of any detailed knowledge about US constitutional subtleties.
What I do know, having perused John Lott’s comprehensive study under the self-explanatory title of More Guns, Less Crime, is that the relationship between the availability of guns and crime rate is inverse.
Hence, unless someone disputed and refuted the reams of in-depth statistical evidence gathered by Dr Lott, ascribing the tragedy that so moved my friend Barack Hussein simply to the availability of firearms is frivolous and manipulative.
But then ‘frivolous and manipulative’ are words that these days adequately describe any public display by any public official anywhere in the West. Nothing new there, though Barack Hussein’s tears get top prize in the histrionics stakes.
Anyone who believes that anything short of applying thespian techniques à la Stanislavsky or else chopping a mound of onions can make a modern politician cry hasn’t studied modern politics closely.
Thus what caught my eye was precisely the cloying, tasteless sentimentality of Barack Hussein’s act, not its puny intellectual content. But then the truth dawned on me.
The moisture streaming down Barack Hussein’s cheeks wasn’t tears of grief. It was tears of joy, satisfaction of a job well done and well rewarded.
It’s just an unsubstantiated thought of mine, but Mr Obama must be an off-the-books employee of the gun-maker Smith & Wesson, or else a secret holder of a large block of shares in the company. Why else would the contents of his speech have been leaked beforehand if not to boost gun sales in anticipation?
If that was the real purpose of Barack Hussein’s action, then it has succeeded spectacularly. Shares in Smith & Wesson have jumped up to their highest mark since 1999, and the Obama family fortune must have moved in the same direction.
If my hypothesis is correct, then this is, and will remain, the only tangible effect of Obama’s announcement. I mean, you don’t really think gun crime will go down as a result, do you?
If you do, I can only quote one of Mr Obama’s predecessors in office by suggesting you read my lips. Murder, by firearms, knives, fists, feet, axes, bottles or what have you, will always be with us not because criminals have access to the aforementioned expedients but because we have criminals.
Therefore the way to reduce the number of murders is to reduce the number of criminals, not the number of guns. And the way to reduce the number of criminals is to destroy or at least mitigate the social conditions that breed them, the welfare state springing to mind first, the laxity of the punitive system second, the stranglehold on effective policing third and so forth.
Of course, just like the poor, criminals will always be with us, for such is the imperfection of human nature. However, human nature is equally imperfect in Switzerland, where there are practically no murders even though every man has a gun, and in Britain, where guns are outlawed and yet the crime rate is going through the roof.
It’s the task of just government to create conditions that discourage the bad part of human nature and encourage the good. This isn’t a goal that can be achieved by legislating against firearms, knives, fists, feet, axes or bottles. And it can be severely jeopardised by governments acting on institutionalised ignorance, dishonesty and self-serving demagoguery.
However, it would be fitting if my friend Barack Hussein, having started his presidency with an ill-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, were to end it with a well-deserved Oscar.