Mr. President, you’re a big backer of Common Core. Is that why you can’t seem to do the math when only bad guys are armed in gun-free zones?

Spencer Stone, one of the American heroes who stopped a terrorist on August 21 on a French train, and Chris Mintz, a student at Oregon’s Umpqua College, were unarmed and seriously wounded while fighting armed madmen. Wouldn’t you prefer pinning medals on heroes who have a better chance of avoiding injury because they were armed?

Your “routine” response, as you called it, to the Oct. 1 mass shooting at Umpqua College was no surprise. We know you don’t trust law-abiding Americans with guns. We know that the “common sense” gun control you routinely demand, but never define, would disarm law-abiding gun owners as much as possible. That’s why you routinely praise countries whose citizens can’t lawfully arm themselves. James Madison knew better:

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” James Madison, Federalist 46

Mr. President, you ridiculed us in 2008 as “bitter” Americans who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them.”

We’re definitely sick of being “beaten down” and “betrayed by government.” We definitely have antipathy towards criminals with guns.

Mr. President, Thomas Jefferson had the common sense to discern the difference between good guys with guns and criminals:

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Mr. President, you and your family live inside a “big gun zone” that surrounds you wherever you go, as it should. The “gun-free zone” at Umpqua College will become a “big gun zone” if you show up.

Nine were dead and seven wounded at Umpqua before police officers engaged the killer only seven minutes after the first 911 call, according to the timeline prepared by the Douglas County, Ore. Sheriff’s office.

Chris Mintz is the unarmed hero shot seven times while trying to stop the Umpqua killer. He’s a 10-year Army vet that you, as his commander in chief, trusted with a gun.

Mr. President, are you willing to look Chris in the face and tell him that you couldn’t trust him with a gun at Umpqua? If you visit the shooting victims and families of the dead, try asking them.

With all due respect, your comments about Umpqua before knowing any facts were misleading, insulting and embarrassing for you. You missed the truth bullseye by a mile.

Try reading the response to your comments by John R. Lott, a leading expert in analyzing gun crime statistics and author of More Guns, Less Crime. You know who he is. He says that in 1996 when you were both at the University of Chicago you told him:

“I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.”

Mr. President, while in the Illinois Senate, you voted against Senate Bill 2165, which asserted a right of citizens to protect themselves with a gun against home invasions, regardless of local ordinances against handgun possession.

Can you understand why we might believe Mr. Lott and not you?

Here are some of your comments about Umpqua and Lott’s responses to Newsmax TV show host Steve Malzberg on Oct. 2 and extensive research available on Mr. Lott’s website.

Obama:

Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws -- even in the face of repeated mass killings.”  

Lott:

"The United States ranks about ninth compared to countries in Europe in terms of either the rate of these mass public shootings or the fatalities from them.

But we're over 320 million people and so you have to kind of adjust a little bit for the population differences. If you take Europe as a whole, there's not a big difference in the per capita rate of mass public shootings compared to the United States. Europe has had the worst of the mass public shootings.”

Obama:

“There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?”

Lott:

“In these mass public shootings, it’s seems hard for me to believe that we can just ignore the fact that the attack yesterday as well as all the other ones that President Obama’s talked about in his administration, as well all but two since at least 1950, keep on occurring where guns are banned.”

Mr. President, during an interview at the White House, a student referred to the June 6, 2014 shooting at Seattle Pacific University, a private Christian school, you were asked what you would do. At 2:28 on the tape, you said:

“I respect gun rights But the idea for example that we couldn’t even get a background check bill in to make sure that if you’re going to buy a weapon you have to actually go through a rigorous process so that we can know who you are so that you can’t just walk up to a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon makes no sense.”

Other than a little shop around the corner run by MS-13 in your kind of Democrat-run gun-control town of Chicago, can you name a store that sells anyone a handgun without a “background check” cleared by the FBI?

There is the store your BATFE agents used during “Fast & Furious,” which resulted in guns getting into the hands of two illegal aliens who murdered U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry.

Mr. President, how about taking this advice from the ultimate Common Sense patriot?

“The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.” -- Thomas Paine

Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.