Shouldn’t we at least wait to get all the facts before doing so? In fact, even before President Obama urges people to politicize the shooting in Oregon this afternoon, he admits that “we don’t know all the facts yet,” and in fact don’t know whether the myriad of laws surrounding gun ownership already were violated. It’s not much short of calling for mob action, a scene that has already popped up too often in American life this year too:

https://youtu.be/bvEGFjWfHAE

President Obama made an impassioned case that the issue of gun violence is “something we should politicize” following a mass shooting on Thursday at a community college in Oregon.

A visibly angry Obama blasted Congress for being unwilling to change the nations gun laws in response to a wave of mass shootings that have cast a cloud over his presidency.

“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” Obama said. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

Let’s recall that Obama’s solution to the Newtown shooting and every shooting since has been to expand background checks and banning so-called “assault weapons,” and in every case since then, his proposal would have been a non-sequitur anyway. “My response here at this podium end up being routine,” Obama protests, and then lists a litany of incidents in which the knee-jerk immediate reaction to the shootings demanded solutions that would have done nothing to address the shootings that had taken place.

Did this shooter pass a background check? Did he use an “assault weapon”? We don’t know yet, and neither does Obama. But hey, let’s pass a bunch of laws and see what sticks, or something. (Note: News reports at the moment say the shooter used “three pistols and one long rifle.”)

In fact, while this venting undoubtedly provided some catharsis for the President, he still didn’t have any solutions to fit the previous shootings, let alone make a case that more gun laws — which Oregon passed not long ago anyway — would have prevented this one. The only solution which would address Obama’s righteous indignation would be widespread confiscation of firearms, which actually was the “solution” implemented in a couple of the countries Obama cites as responsible examples. That’s the solution Obama actually wants, but for some reason he’s not quite ready to demand it. I wonder why.

Instead, we get the March of the Straw Men about how the US has no gun laws that restrict their use, no laws that allow that allow the federal government to control access to firearms, and most importantly, no laws that make shooting people a crime in the first place. You can probably guess what he’ll say, because this kind of vapid chest-beating has become routine at the White House. Maybe Obama can put some effort into following up on failed gun checks, a point made after Newtown, and which the White House has not mentioned since.

Update: Obama makes a Freudian slip by mentioning Tucson, and he realizes it immediately. Democrats rushed to politicize that as a Tea Party attack on one of their own inspired by Sarah Palin rather than wait for the facts. That effort at politicization didn’t turn out so well, did it?

Update: One other point.  In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen Democrats screaming about the politicization of four Americans killed more than three years ago in a woefully unprotected consulate in the middle of a failed state created by the policies of a Democratic president and their leading presidential contender, and at almost the same time the leader of the Democratic Party demanding we politicize a shooting that just ended without bothering to wait for any facts at all. Try wrapping your mind around that.