Any politician’s proposed legislation needs to have a provable “yes” answer to both of these questions:

1. Is it constitutional?
2. Will it work?

Investors Business Daily opines on point two:

The children who stood with President Obama Wednesday had the benefit of armed security, unlike the schools they’ll return to. Their schools remain in zones that are gun-free, except for predators, as at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. They’ll have no armed guards or teachers allowed to carry concealed protection, and none of Obama’s 23 legislative proposals and executive actions will provide them.

One item proposes funding for 1,000 more “school resource officers” — counselors that will somehow thwart gun violence. But there was no proposal to ban gun-free zones that make children and others targets, or to have armed guards at schools like Sandy Hook, or one to give the teachers who gave their lives protecting students the right to have had a concealed weapon. …

The call for universal background checks, including at all gun shows, ignores that the guns Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook were legally purchased and registered by his mother. A recent Department of Justice study found only 0.7% of guns were purchased at gun shows and only 20% of guns used in crimes were purchased anywhere.

Renewing a ban on certain “assault” weapons because they look scarier than others is nonsensical. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who has admitted carrying a concealed weapon when she felt her life was in danger, now proposes renewing the failed 1994 assault weapons ban.

That ban, which did nothing to prevent Columbine, was largely based on a weapon’s cosmetic appearance, not on its capability for carnage. An “assault weapon” with a carrying handle, a thumbhole stock or a pistol grip is just as lethal as one without, except it would be banned and the same gun without these cosmetic features would not be. And these are not machine guns; one trigger-pull releases one bullet, just like a handgun.

Similarly, limiting the size of gun magazines is not effective, since a predator who has already decided to break the law and kill will either disregard that law as well or simply carry more clips.

It’s hard to see how limiting an ammo clip to 10 rounds, or seven as New York has done, would accomplish anything. Just ask the Atlanta mother who hid with her twin children in her attic after shooting a single intruder five times before fleeing to safety.

Would any of the president’s proposals have prevented what he termed the “workplace violence” that occurred at Ft. Hood, Texas, when unarmed soldiers were gunned down by Maj. Nidal Hassan?

National Review adds:

The president overstepped his bounds, however, in directing the Centers for Disease Control to study gun control. Congress has taken steps to deny the CDC funds for this purpose — the unfortunately imprecise statutory language is that the CDC may not “advocate or promote gun control” — primarily because the agency has proven itself unable to address this topic in an unbiased fashion. If the president wants to spend federal dollars on these studies, he should go through Congress. Anyway, the administration does not seem interested in learning from the research we already have. Serious research reviews by the National Academy of Sciences and the CDC itself have failed to find evidence that gun control reduces crime — despite the massive amount of work that has been done. (And in case anyone in the administration is unclear on this point, gun ownership is not a disease.)

President Obama also called for restoring the assault-weapons ban and capping magazine size at ten rounds. As we have explained previously, these measures are not useful if the goal is to reduce crime: President Obama can call assault rifles “weapons designed for the theater of war” all he wants, but in fact they are semiautomatic guns, functionally indistinguishable from hunting rifles. High-capacity magazines, meanwhile, are of dubious benefit to someone intent on harming innocents: They require less frequent reloading, but are more likely to jam, and at any rate changing magazines is not difficult even for the untrained.

In addition, the president backed mandatory background checks on gun sales between private individuals; under current law, checks are required only for sales conducted through licensed dealers. In theory, a comprehensive background-check system could be helpful — but in practice, any attempt to implement such a system would probably be cumbersome and unworkable, and the president did not offer specifics. It would be wrong to make gun sales difficult and expensive, or to spend massive amounts of money on a project with dubious benefits.

All in all, the president’s agenda seems better designed for the polls than for public safety.

The Obama premise is that this country is too many guns. When your premise is incorrect, so is the rest of your argument.

John R. Lott Jr.:

The evidence — and there is plenty of it — points to the very opposite, that cutting access to guns mainly disarms law-abiding citizens, making criminals’ lives easier. Guns let potential victims defend themselves when the police aren’t there.

First, let’s just be clear that lots of nations, including “civilized” ones, suffer from both higher overall murder and gun murder rates. Indeed, we are very far from the top.

In 2011, the U.S. murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000 people, the gun murder rate was 3.1.

Much of Eastern Europe; most of Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa; all but one South American nation; and all of Central America and Mexico suffer even higher murder rates than we do. For example, despite very strict gun control, Russia’s and Brazil’s homicide rates over the last decade averaged about four to five times higher than ours.

Indeed, if you are going to look across all nations and not just a select few, what you find is that the nations with the strictest gun control tend to have higher murder rates. …

The seemingly most obvious way to stop criminals from getting guns is simply to ban them.

So what happened in the countries that banned either handguns or all guns?

It did not go well: In every single place that we have data for, murder rates went up. Chicago and D.C. provided spectacular failures within the U.S.

But this has been true worldwide. The U.K., Ireland and Jamaica, despite being island nations that can’t blame a neighbor for supplying guns, have suffered more murders after gun control was passed.

It’s unsurprisingly ironic that politicians who have armed guards to protect themselves — Obama, U.S. senators, big-city mayors and big-city police chiefs — want to take away your right to protect your own family. Obama’s executive orders and his proposed legislation — are the first step to doing just that.

Police response is not instantaneous. (And the larger the city you live in, or the more spread out the rural area you live in, the slower police response is.) By the time the police get to your home, you or your family could already be dead or injured from someone with evil intent. This is why we have not just the Second Amendment, but the castle doctrine. As the police say, better to be judged by 12 than carried out by six.

As for point one:

American history and civics are not taught much in school these days. But the Second Amendment, part of the Constitution that President Obama routinely ignores, was written not so people could shoot deer, but so they can protect themselves from the government tyrants who would eviscerate their freedoms.

It was written so good guys with guns could protect themselves, their families and their children from the bad guys with guns.

How ignorant do you have to be to believe that the Second Amendment has anything to do with hunting? The Founding Fathers fought against their government, which, according to the laws of Great Britain, was duly elected and authorized to do whatever Great Britain wanted in America. Yes, the Founding Fathers fought against their own government, with guns. Hence the Second Amendment, to preserve our ability to own, yes, guns.

Infringement of Second Amendment rights are not the only constitutional rights in danger, as Charles Hurt points out:

The lists of people who are deemed too mentally unstable to own a gun.

A principled liberal would be horrified at the notion that the government is going to keep giant lists of people who are criminals or who are deemed crazy or dangerous. And even more breathtaking is that these lists will be used to determine the degree of freedom those individuals will be granted by the government.

Do you remember the liberal outrage over the huge government list to keep people deemed dangerous from flying on airplanes? Ted Kennedy is turning over in his grave.

U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R–Kansas):

“The Second Amendment is non-negotiable. The right to bear arms is a right, despite President Obama’s disdain for the Second Amendment and the Constitution’s limits on his power.  Congress must stand firm for the entirety of the Constitution – even if, but particularly so, when President Obama seeks to ignore his obligation to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’  Taking away the rights and abilities of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves is yet another display of the Obama Administration’s consolidation of power.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman (R–Texas):

“Gun bans and anti-gun laws have always lead to one thing – more gun violence.  We owe it to innocent people to make this country as safe as possible.  Sadly, in President Obama’s announcement every tragedy he mentioned was either in a state that aggressively restricts the right to keep and bear arms or was in a location that banned guns completely.

“The White House has indicated they are willing to use Executive Orders to infringe upon the God-given right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment from government intrusion.  President Obama announced the specifics of his anti-gun sneak attack today, though he refuses to answer questions regarding his own illegal transfer of weapons to Mexican drug lords.

“Among the Executive Orders issued are tracking of your firearms, which creates a de facto national gun registry, and a White House demand for laws regulating the private transfer of firearms.  In other words, if you give your son his first hunting rifle, you may face a prison sentence if you fail to get approval from the government.

“Those proposals, along with others floated by the White House as presidential decrees, are cutting attacks on your right as a peaceable person to keep and bear arms for your defense.  The ability to defend one from aggressors is a basic human right.”

Stockman has brought up the I word:

“Impeachment is not something to be taken lightly. It is a grave and serious undertaking that should only be initiated in a sober and serious manner.  It should be reserved only for most egregious of trespasses by the President.  I would consider using Executive Orders to engage in attacks on a constitutionally-protected right and violating his sworn oath of office to be such a trespass.  The President cannot issue executive orders depriving the people of full access to an enumerated constitutional right.”

Because people vote with their feet, consider two facts — gun sales are at post-Christmas record levels at gun stores, and the National Rifle Association has added 250,000 new members.