For the Children, of Course

Last week when President Obama unveiled his new executive orders on gun control, he was surrounded by little kids at the podium.  The message being sent of course is that if you disagree in any way with the president, you must be also be against little kids as well, wanting to open them up to more opportunities to be attacked at school.  When substantive argument is not enough, these are the places you go.

Here is the picture if you don't believe me:

To be sure, certainly not all uses of children by politicians is a bad thing--quite to the contrary.  But in everything this president seems to do, it's all towards continuing to build up the straw men that he wants to portray as his adversaries' real positions.

The other half of this problem is exhibited by this story I found on Yahoo! News, which coincidentally blasts conservatives such as me who are blasting the president in this regard:

But children deserve a voice in this debate: Grownups have argued fiercely about gun control, "but as usual, kids say it better," says Joyce Slaton at BabyCenter. Taejah Goode, 10, said he grieved for the Newtown victims and asked Obama to "STOP gun violence." Julia Stokes, 11, urged Obama in her letter to make it "very hard for people to buy guns." Obama was right to share these letters. These voices must be heard. Kids have "a simple, heartfelt way of cutting through the nonsense."

But saying that we have to "STOP gun violence" does not say at all exactly how to stop it.  I think everyone but the most contemptible madman would disagree with that statement.  The problem is that the president is focusing on policies that either will have no impact (in other words, criminals by definition don't follow the law) or will actually do the reverse of the intention of the those policies (gun store sales right now are through the roof).  Unless we are going to be writing up policies in crayon, that's about how far I think children will help in fixing the supposed problems the president is trying to correct.

And, to come full circle on this story, gun violence has actually fallen dramatically in the last ten years.  Also, to leave you with something not highly reported on in the war against "assault rifles," those committing gun violence use handguns by a massive margin.  People use their bare hands five times more than people who actually use rifles of any kind for the purposes of murder.