Why Obama would rather talk about guns

In his USA Today column Glenn Reynolds notes that even though gun control is a losing issue for Democrats, Obama is pushing it. Why?

Well, the answer is, that when we’re talking about guns, a bad issue for Obama, we’re not talking about other things that pose worse issues for Obama. And the list of those is long.

In Syria, Putin is making Obama look weak, ordering U.S. planes out of the sky, bombing CIA-supported rebels, and allying with Iranian troops. Obama has no real response, leading to The Economist headline, "Putin Dares, Obama Dithers.”

Meanwhile, despite Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, the 14-year-old war in Afghanistan goes on, with U.S. forces apparently bombing a civilian hospital run by Doctors Without Borders by mistake, killing many.

In Ukraine, Russia is deploying new, more advanced missiles. Putin is also building a major base near the Ukraine-Russia border.

After the Chinese Office of Personnel Management hack that some (including me) described as a ”cyber Pearl Harbor,” it turns out that way more fingerprint data was stolen than OPM originally reported. And the CIA was forced to pull spies out of China for fear that the hack compromised their identities.

Here at home, the Secret Service joined the list of agencies in the Obama Administration found to have abused its powers to target political opponents — in this case, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, — and then the Secret Service director changed his story, backing away from original claims that he didn’t know about it.

Meanwhile, the latest jobs numbers show a record 94,610,000 Americans not in the work force, for the lowest labor participation rate in 38 years, even as the economy shows other signs of sputtering.

And, of course, there’s the steady drip, drip of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. With Hillary, Obama’s secretary of State for most of his presidency, and with questions about how much the president and other officials knew about her shady practices, he’d just as soon we didn’t talk about it.

In fact, Obama would just as soon we didn’t talk about any of these debacles. The gun issue may not be a winner for him, but it’s an ideologically divided issue where most Democrats will take his side, and it’s a hot-button issue that lets him inflame debate just by bringing it up.

These other stories, meanwhile, raise questions about Obama’s presidency that even Democrats are finding hard to ignore. Is it any wonder that Obama would rather talk about guns?

Read more here.

When you follow events as closely as Glenn Reynods (Instapundit), you start to be able to figure out the whys.