I have a strong hunch that people who are commonly referred to these days as "useful idiots" don't like that term.  That shouldn't surprise anyone because no one likes to be thought of as an idiot, any type of idiot.

That said, the useful idiots who gave us four more years of Obama probably don't realize that he's using the Newtown massacre right now to manipulate them.  He's playing them like a fiddle hoping to savage the Second Amendment to the Constitution and restrict gun ownership and use by sane, law-abiding citizens.

Does anyone think that criminals will have any trouble getting guns and ammunition and lots of both regardless of the laws that our elected officials pass?  I hope not.

Does anyone believe that the roughly 250 million to 300 million guns that are in private hands today in this country will miraculously disappear if our government tries to restrict them?  Again, I hope not.

Curtailing alcohol use in the U.S. is a shining example of what happens when do-gooders (i.e., useful idiots) have their way.  They gave us prohibition and ushered in organized crime as we know it.  Prohibition didn't eliminate drinking alcohol any more than restricting guns, magazines, and ammunition will solve our violent crime problem.  All it will do is create a black market and make criminals richer.

Blaming guns for senseless killing is like blaming cars for deaths due to drunk drivers.  In South Carolina, the state where I live, lawmakers passed legislation that actually helped to reduce our drunk driving problem.  It works like this: if you are caught drinking and driving, you go to jail.  You don't pass "Go" and you don't collect $200--no exceptions. 

It's amazing what can happen when you target the guilty instead of the instruments they use.  If you want to reduce violent crime, target the criminals and the mentally deranged people who commit violent crimes.  A side benefit of targeting the guilty instead of the instruments they use is that you avoid punishing the innocent who have never committed a violent crime and never will.  The problem is the person committing the crime, not the instrument he used.

Unfortunately, I think that most of the people in our country who are jumping on the bandwagon where restricting guns is concerned are useful idiots and/or opportunist politicians who are taking full advantage of the senseless deaths of those innocent children in Newtown to enhance their political careers.  Opportunist politicians are shameless.  They don't really care about the problem or the children, but they desperately need useful idiots to succeed.  I hope that the useful idiots, or most of them, wake up and realize that the problem with the president's plan can and will affect them personally.  By that I mean that it will improve the odds of them becoming victims of violent crimes.

As Thomas Sowell said,

The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.

Thinking is not a bad thing.  God gave us brains for a reason.

Neil Snyder is the Ralph A. Beeton Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia.  His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.