There are a number of martial arts—Judo is probably the most famous of these—in which the practitioner relies on redirecting the energy of his opponent back against him. The national debates about gun control and Muslim immigration and refugees since the Paris attack and now the attack in San Bernardino can be understood as political Judo. The Obama administration, and in general the Democratic Party and the left, are politically vulnerable on terrorism and the Islamic State. So why talk about them? Better to push the argument onto friendlier terrain.
For this effort, the Democrats can rely on the enthusiastic participation of much of the media, and also of Donald Trump, whose reckless proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country distracts from important discussions we should be having about the threat posed by the Islamic State. My Twitter feed today is packed with one handwringing remark after another about how Trump's candidacy plays directly into the terrorists' hands. I doubt that—it seems to me that Daesh would be being doing its thing with or without the Donald's prominence. But I do know that Trump is a heaven-sent gift for Hillary Clinton's campaign, wrapped with personal care by God or Allah or the Tetragrammaton or whomever you please.
The Democrats drive the conversation to immigration and to gun control not only because these are useful ploys, but also because they are true believers. Obama could not make it more clear that Islamic terrorism is, to him, not a major issue. The fact that he, the New York Times, and the rest of his party have sought to redirect American horror at the San Bernardino attack into energy for greater gun control has been widely remarked upon, but I'm not sure its boldness has been fully appreciated. Consider the precise meaning of the President's pivot to the issue in his lecturing, mildly exasperated Oval Office address:
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have disrupted countless plots here and overseas, and worked around the clock to keep us safe. Our military and counterterrorism professionals have relentlessly pursued terrorist networks overseas— disrupting safe havens in several different countries, killing Osama bin Laden, and decimating al Qaeda’s leadership.
Over the last few years, however, the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we’ve become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.
Catch that? Basically, we need no longer worry that much about another 9/11, because the President's strategy has worked. (Which seems to me like a pretty significant hostage to fortune, if you'll forgive the expression in this context.) The nature of the San Bernardino attack is actually evidence of this success. But because of the mass shooting problem exacerbated by those Yahoos in the Republican Party, the terrorists can still get at us. Let's fix that by taking away the guns.
Never mind that the San Bernardino terrorists weren't on the no-fly list. Never mind that committed terrorists will always get their hands on weapons, as the Paris attackers did in a country with very strict gun control laws. The president's solutions obviously don't match the threat. But that doesn't matter. This crisis can't go to waste. He is always on offense.
He also appears to believe that the country is at a tipping point, and that a gun control debate is now friendly terrain for Democrats. But he, the New York Times, and everyone else on the left is wrong about that. Their mistake is well captured in the language of the Times' embarrassing front-page Sunday editorial:
The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms. ... These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection.
The error is this: gun owners don't take their Second Amendment rights seriously because of the marketing prowess or political influence of the gun industry. That's mistaking cause for effect. Support for gun rights is driven by the deeply held and entirely rational beliefs of Americans who see themselves as primarily responsible for their own safety, and that of their families.
This belief, to progressives, makes little sense. For them, there is no daylight between the government and the individual or the family. The government is what we do together. It's how we solve our problems. Gun violence (which is significantly lower than it was at the peak of the crack-cocaine wars in the '90s, but, again, never mind) is a problem that suggests an obvious solution: individuals surrendering their gun rights to the state in return for greater security. To the left, this is such no-brainer that only human irrationality, or the marketing dollars and power of a wealthy lobby, could get in the way of progress.
The gun debate is, always has been, and always will be so divisive because it is a proxy war over America's political first principles. If you believe that you must rely on yourself, your family, your church, and other similar small scale associations first, and the government second, you are likely to see gun ownership by law-abiding citizens as a good thing. (This applies even to very deadly weapons. The fact that they are deadly is the point.) If you invest great trust in the government, and are suspicious of institutions like the family and religion as reactionary forces that often stand in the way of progress, you are likely to want gun access to be heavily restricted.
There is nevertheless room for modest compromise here, especially on the issue of access to guns by those with mental health problems. But don't expect that compromise to come under this president. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack that killed fourteen people, Barack Obama decided that instead of speaking and acting in a way that would unite the country, he would continue to focus his rhetoric on the real problem facing the country: Conservatives.