Obama vs.


NRA


The president seizes on gun control to burnish his progressive legacy.


T BY DAVID A. PATTEN


he enormity of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in New- town, Conn. — in which six teachers


and 20 children had been brutally murdered — was being burned into the nation’s conscience just as President Barack Obama planned a post-election lurch to the left. Momentarily, the shocking


images that played across TV screens united a divided nation.


46 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2013 If the president needed a lit-


mus-test issue to help him etch his progressive legacy into the history books, deranged Newtown shooter Adam Lanza delivered it to the White House steps. Team Obama responded. Just weeks later in his second inaugural address, the president delivered a manifesto that was unabashedly liberal. Boldly sweeping aside the rug-


ged individualism of Ronald Rea- gan and the centrist pragmatism of Bill Clinton, Obama called for


“collective action” to address the country’s challenges. “Our journey is not complete,”


Obama declared, in a speech wide- ly described as among the most divisive ever by a sitting president, “until all of our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.” He added, “We cannot mis-


take absolutism for principle,” not bothering to explain how rights the


BULLETS/ISTOCKPHOTO


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