As President Barack Obama has outwardly attempted to curtail Americans’ Constitutional Second Amendment right to bear arms, his Administration has approved huge increases in defense spending and export sales. The Administration is now seeking to eliminate stringent State Department controls on exports and foreign licensing of dozens of categories of weapons and technology from the United States Munitions List (USML) by transferring control to the pro-business Commerce Department.
In spite of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warnings this change could increase terrorist access to dangerous weapons, the Administration claims this “reform” would enhance “the competitiveness of key United States manufacturing and technology sectors.”
It may seem hypocritical to tighten gun control at home and flood the world with weapons. But since Obama was elected president, Democrats have eliminated Republicans’ advantage in collecting defense industry campaign contributions.
President Obama has tried to push Congress into passing extensive domestic gun control legislation. In Obama's first four years in office he also used his regulatory powers for the federal government to conduct about the same number of background checks on gun owners and prospective buyers as George W. Bush's in his first six years in office.
Declaring a national gun control crisis after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in January 2013, the Administration issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to “improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, what might help prevent it, and how to minimize its burden on public health.” According to the Institute of Medicine, “One of these orders directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to identify the most pressing problems in firearm violence a committee tasked with developing a potential research agenda that focuses on the causes of, possible interventions to, and strategies to minimize the burden of firearm-related violence.”
It seems clear that the goal of this Presidential Executive Order is to instruct the CDC to fund medical research to “prove” that gun owners are afflicted with some pathological disease or mental defect.
The President may have been visibly advocating gun control in America, but he has been a huge cheerleader for expanding the American defense industry. Since 2008, U.S. defense spending grew by 25% to $900 billion; defense exports grew by 30% to $73 billion; and foreign licensing agreements grew 46% to approximately $50 billion.
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