In a stunning example of both cluelessness and callousness, President Obama arrived in Orlando to tell the families of the dead and wounded that self-defense was not an option for their loved ones. The Islamist terrorist killer, Omar Mateen had time to methodically search for victims, stream his atrocity on Facebook, and make 16 phone calls. It was time enough, including between reloads, for someone with a Glock to blow his head off.

Yet President Obama wants only predators to have guns. As PJMedia.com reported:

President Obama visited the scene of the Pulse nightclub shooting today in Orlando, declaring that "the notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies common sense."

"Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense," Obama said before a backdrop of a makeshift memorial of flowers and balloons. "They should meet with the Newtown families, some of whom Joe saw yesterday, whose children would now be finishing fifth grade, on why it is that we think our liberty requires these repeated tragedies. That's not -- that's not the meaning of liberty."

Actually, it’s the president’s remarks that defy common sense. The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando was essentially a gun-free zone. It is not enough to post a single security guard at a lone entrance. Why weren’t the bouncers armed? Why didn’t the bartenders have weapons available? Generally, alcohol and firearms do not mix, but neither does naiveté and terrorism.

Self-defense is essential to liberty, Mr. President. That is why the Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment in the Constitution – to safeguard our liberty against both tyrants and terrorists. Gun “violence” gave this nation its freedom against the tyranny of the British crown as doctors, lawyers and shopkeepers picked up the “assault weapons” of their day – muskets – and did what the victims of Orlando could not do – fight on self-defense of their lives and liberty.

We will give up our guns, Mr. President, when you give up yours – when you disband the Secret Service and declare the White House a gun-free zone like Newtown, like the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, like the meeting room in San Bernardino, and like Ft. Hood, where an Islamist terrorist, Maj. Nidal Hassan, slaughtered unarmed soldiers while shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” in a rampage you and your administration called “workplace violence”.

Was it workplace violence when Colleen Moore was stabbed and beheaded in Moore, Oklahoma where a good guy with a gun stopped further killing? As Investor’s Business Daily noted:

The Islamic State's call for "lone wolf" attacks on Western infidels might have met its match in the Second Amendment, as an armed man saves lives by shooting a jihadist wannabe bent on heeding that call.

Vaughan Foods employee Traci Johnson is alive today because the business she works for is not a gun-free zone at a time when the Islamic State is encouraging attacks on infidels in the West like the one in Moore, Okla., where co-worker Colleen Hufford was stabbed and beheaded.

The alleged attacker, 30-year-old Alton Nolen, was stopped as he was stabbing and preparing to behead Johnson by Mark Vaughan, the food distributor's chief operating officer. Vaughn, who is also a reserve county deputy, drew the gun he was carrying and stopped Nolen, police say, before he could claim more victims.

In San Bernardino, like Orlando and other mass shootings, the slaughter of the innocent could have been cut short by someone with a gun. As the widow of one of the victims noted:      

Amy Wetzel is the widow of San Bernardino shooting victim Michael Wetzel and she is also applying for a concealed carry weapons permit. During a recent interview, she speculated that the outcome of the San Bernardino terrorist attack could have been very different if someone had been carrying a concealed gun.

“What if someone in that room (at the Inland Regional Center) had had a permit to carry (a concealed weapon),” she said.

What if, Mr. President, residents of Orlando and San Bernardino hadn’t been so intimidated by the fear of being called racists, a consequence of you and your administration’s political correctness, that they said something when they saw something? As Fox News reported, a Sen Bernardino woman observed preparations for the attack but said nothing:

 A California woman reportedly noticed “suspicious activity” at a house connected one of the Muslim terrorists in the San Bernardino massacre but did want “profile” him, amid questions about how family members and others could have overlooked the stockpile of ammunition and explosives left behind in his home.

A man identified as Aaron Elswick told an ABC News affiliate that a fellow neighbor noticed “quite a few packages” being delivered “within a short amount of time” at a home registered to the mother of Syed Farook, who with wife Tashfeen Malik, fatally shot 14 people and wounded dozens of others Wednesday at a business complex in San Bernardino, Calif.

The Islamic State-inspired Malik reportedly entered the country on a so-called “fiancé visa” that listed a false or at least inaccurate foreign home address.

Elswick said his neighbor also noticed the occupants of the home purportedly owned by Farook’s mother “doing a lot of work out in the garage” but perhaps “didn’t want to profile” Farook and his family.

Likewise, in Orlando, fear of being politically incorrect may have doomed scores to death. Former Florida police officer Daniel Gilroy, who worked with shooter Omar Mateen at G4S Security, told Florida Today that he reported Omar Mateen’s belligerent and bizarre behavior and views:

A former Fort Pierce police officer who once worked with 29-year-old Omar Mateen, the assailant in an Orlando nightclub shooting that left at least 50 dead, said he was "unhinged and unstable."

Daniel Gilroy said he worked the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift with G4S Security at the south gate at PGA Village for several months in 2014-15. Mateen took over from him for a 3 to 11 p.m. shift.

Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, said Mateen frequently made homophobic and racial comments. Gilroy said he complained to his employer several times but it did nothing because he was Muslim. Gilroy quit after he said Mateen began stalking him via multiple text messages -- 20 or 30 a day.

Yet President Obama said nothing about the dangers of political correctness to the Orlando families. Overlooked in the news coverage of the Orlando and San Bernardino shootings was the Oregon massacre that wasn’t at Clackamas Town Center Mall in December of 2012. As Investor’s Business Daily noted, fortune placed a good guy with a gun at the same place a bad guy with a gun planned a massacre:

Before the tragedy in Connecticut, a shooter at an Oregon shopping mall was stopped by an armed citizen with a concealed carry permit who refused to be a victim, preventing another mass tragedy.

In the target-rich environment of the Clackamas Town Center two weeks before Christmas, the shooter managed to kill only two people before killing himself. A far worse tragedy was prevented when he was confronted by a hero named Nick Meli.

As the shooter was having difficulty with his weapon, Meli pulled his and took aim, reluctant to fire lest an innocent bystander be hit. But he didn't have to pull the trigger: The shooter fled when confronted, ending his own life before it could be done for him.

We will never know how many lives were saved by an armed citizen that day.

Indeed, we will not. What we do know is that killers will deliberately choose gun-free zones such as Umqua or that Aurora, Colorado movie theatre to target their victims knowing there will be no one thereto immediately return fire:

As John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Research Prevention Center, wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, "Since at least 1950, all but two mass public shootings in America have taken place where general citizens are banned from carrying guns." This is usually why they are selected as targets, Lott says.

In the July 2012 mass shooting inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the shooter had a choice of seven movie theaters within 20 miles of his home that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. The Cinemark Theater he chose wasn't the closest, but it was the only one that banned customers from carrying guns inside.

So enough of the exploitative rhetoric, President Obama. Ever since Cain slew Abel, there has been evil in the world and a desire among some to kill others. Disarming the law-abiding to prevent such killings is like trying to fight drunk driving by making it harder for sober drivers to get driver’s licenses. We don’t need more gun-free zones populated with unarmed targets. We do need more people able to defend themselves.

There was no such person at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, but there was one at Clackamas, Oregon. Let us draw our lesson, Mr. President, from that

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.