To put it mildly, James Taranto is not impressed with what Barack the Weeper announced yesterday:

“This is it, really?” Jennifer Baker, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm (no pun intended) asks the New York Times rhetorically. “This is what they’ve been hyping for how long now? This is the proposal they’ve spent seven years putting together? They’re not really doing anything.”

She refers, of course, to what the White House calls President Obama’s “commonsense steps … to keep guns out of the wrong hands.” As we write, the White House homepage carries the prominent headline “Watch President Obama Take Action to Reduce Gun Violence.” That’s accompanied by an 84-minute video that is literally all talk and no action.

We take it back. It’s not all talk. The first 35 minutes are a “beginning shortly” screen, followed by a minute-plus of an empty lectern and a six-minute introduction.

As for the “action,” as per a White House fact sheet, it consists mostly of an effort to “keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks”:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.

The key phrase here is “in the business of selling.” Not everyone who sells firearms is “in the business.” The law exempts hobbyists and collectors who sell firearms from the requirement that they run background checks on buyers. Only Congress can change the law, and Obama’s gun control agenda couldn’t get past even the Democratic Senate in 2013. So the administration is adopting a broader definition of “in the business of selling firearms” in the hope of expanding background checks (or deterring sellers).

What is the new definition? That’s unclear, and deliberately so. From that Times report:

Under [the president’s] plan, the White House said, officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will begin contacting gun sellers to let them know of new standards to “clarify” who would be considered a regulated dealer—taking into account factors such as whether someone has a business card, uses a website or sells guns in their original packaging.

But there will be no set number for defining how many guns sold would make someone a “dealer”—a standard that some groups had pushed as essential to giving the changes more teeth. White House officials said someone could sell as few as one or two guns yet still be considered a dealer whose sales are subject to background checks.

From the White House’s standpoint, the lack of a clear standard would appear to be a feature rather than a flaw. It means that nobody is safe: Anyone who sells so much as one gun will have reason to fear prosecution. Some will no doubt be deterred, while others will obtain licenses and do the background checks—though as the Violence Policy Center noted in a 2007 report, licensed dealers are exempt from other regulations that apply to private sales. Of those who continue to sell without licenses, a few will be prosecuted. Some, even if acquitted, will have their lives ruined over a malum prohibitum offense.

Meanwhile, malum in se firearms offenses will go on unabated, which is to say the effort is unlikely to save any lives. There will remain numerous channels, both legal and illegal, by which would-be killers can obtain guns.

That VPC report points out that what liberals refer to (imprecisely at best) as the “gun show loophole” was an unintended consequence of earlier gun-control efforts:

From 1968 to 1993, almost anyone who was not prohibited from owning firearms and had a location from which they [sic] intended to conduct business—including their own home or office—could obtain an FFL. For $30 an applicant could receive the three-year license, allowing the license holder to ship, transport, and receive firearms in interstate commerce and engage in retail sales. . . .

In 1986, Congress passed the National Rifle Association-backed Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which further eased regulation of licensees and placed restrictions on ATF’s ability to weed out illegitimate gun dealers. . . .

As a result of the lax requirements for becoming a firearms dealer, the number of Type 1 FFLs ballooned from 146,429 in 1975 to 245,000 in 1992. The vast majority of these license holders were what is known as “kitchen-table” dealers—individuals who conduct business out of their homes and offices and do not operate actual gun or sporting goods stores. And while many “kitchen-table” dealers obtained the license merely to enjoy lower prices and evade the perceived “red tape” associated with gun purchase laws, others recognized it as a dramatic loophole in federal law that could easily be exploited to facilitate high-volume criminal gun trafficking.

In response to the widespread abuse of FFLs and at the urging of the Violence Policy Center, the Clinton administration began strictly enforcing the requirement that license holders be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms as required by the statute.

That’s right, the Clinton administration used the “in the business of selling firearms” requirement as a reason to deny licenses—exactly the opposite of Obama’s approach now.

In addition, Clinton-era legislative changes increased the license fee and imposed new regulatory burdens on licensees. The result was predictable: “The number of Type 1 FFLs in the United States has dropped 79 percent—from 245,628 in 1994 to 50,630 in 2007.”

It’s a safe bet that the Obama measures will have unintended consequences as well. One provision, as Politico notes, weakens medical privacy: It “ enables health care providers to report the names of mentally ill patients to an FBI firearms background check system.” That doesn’t seem unreasonable on its face, but it may deter some patients from seeking treatment.

National Review’s Charles Cooke notes another near-certain consequence:

Ceteris paribus, the United States will play host to at least another 20 million guns by the end of December 2016—many of them so-called “assault weapons.” In addition, the country will welcome another million or so concealed carriers, and another half-million or so NRA members. Every time the president talks about gun control, these numbers increase, and, in consequence, the president’s opponents are strengthened.

One caveat: There’s an element of guesswork in any enumeration of gun sales. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, “the best approximation we can get of the number of firearms sold each year comes from the FBI’s data on gun background checks.”

But that’s convenient for an administration that claims to be expanding background checks. Obama and his men will be able to spin increased demand for guns as a success: “Look at all the checks we’re conducting!”

So a policy loop is created: Gun control is stiffened, which doesn’t actually result in reducing gun violence; thus there are more calls for gun control. Maybe Obama can see an ObamaCare doctor for his tear duct problem before his next gun control speech.