Political Poker: Playing with a Stacked Deck

On July 22nd, 1865, Wild Bill Hickok faced a stacked deck in Springfield, Missouri. He was playing poker, but it wasn’t the deck of cards that was stacked; it was the room full of Davis Tutt’s armed associates that surrounded the poker table. Tutt and Hickok had a running feud fueled by mutual interests in the same woman and a purported gambling debt. Tutt was intentionally egging on Hickok by providing the other gamblers at the table with money and advice on how to beat him. At some point Tutt decided to intentionally humiliate Hickok. He grabbed Hickok’s prized possession, a gold pocket watch, saying he would hold onto the watch until Hickok paid the disputed gambling debt. Surrounded by Tutt’s armed associates, and no stranger to the logic of live today to fight tomorrow, Hickok held both his tongue and gun in check and prudently withdrew.

The next day Hickok took to the town square and found Davis Tutt. To his credit Hickok tried to negotiate for the watch, but Tutt’s overconfidence wouldn’t allow it. Bereft of his armed associates, Tutt mistakenly took on Wild Bill Hickok at about 75 yards and was killed outright.

Over a hundred and fifty years later, this president is bent on bullying John Q. Public and taking away his prized possession – the right to keep and bear arms to protect himself and his family from an oppressive, tyrannical government. Just like Tutt, Obama has the deck stacked with a room full of associates. Obama’s favorite and most effective associate is misinformation.

Just about everything that’s been said by the White House about the terrorist attack in Orlando last week has been false, either through outright lying or by omission of fact. The White House called the 49 killed and over 50 wounded the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States. It was a horrible event to be sure but not even close in terms of sheer magnitude. The Los Angeles Times called it “The deadliest in American history,” as did newspapers around the country.

Not so: the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 saw about 675 soldiers ride into a tribal campsite in eastern Colorado and kill more than 165 Cheyenne and Arapaho tribe members. More than half the dead were women and children, and they were waving a white flag. In 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, Army soldiers opened fire on Lakota Chief Big Foot and a band of his tribe, killing more than 150 men, women and children. Over the course of American history, there would be several such slaughters and almost all done by the U.S. Government.

To say the press is in the bag for Obama would be a gross understatement. A recent Boston Globe front page headline read, in all capital letters, “Make It Stop” with a life-size AR-15 photo running lengthwise from the top to the bottom of the page which included a black spot and written beneath it, “Bullet entry actual size.”

Another associate of our president showed his total disregard for the United States Constitution by saying, “I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in America culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.” He believes the Second Amendment is a mistake and should be eliminated. This philosophy permeates all who surround him. Most recently Senator Joe Manchin, a Wisconsin Democrat, said on a radio show, “Due process is what’s killing us right now,” and proposed a five-year suspension of civil rights and surveillance when the FBI fails to find anything wrong after “suspicion” arises.

A third associate is the various branches of the federal government over which Obama reigns supreme. His latest anti-gun move is to turn the gun control movement over to the Department of Homeland Security, which has already begun to put wheels in motion to reduce John Q’s Second Amendment rights.

“We have to face the fact that meaningful gun control has to be a part of homeland security,” Jeh Johnson, Secretary for Homeland Security said in an interview on CBS This Morning. “We need to do something to minimize the opportunity for terrorists to get a gun in this country.” Johnson plans to deny those on the no-fly list and terrorist watch list the right to keep and bear arms, yet getting on the list is arbitrary and getting off the list is all but impossible.

Meanwhile Obama’s legislative associates are beating the drum for more gun control legislation, including a recent filibuster, with an eye toward outlawing the AR-15. Oddly, as it turns out, it wasn’t the weapon used in Orlando after all, but Democrats have never let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good story.

And, finally, the Great Deceiver-in-Chief himself is preparing more executive action on gun control, but like Davis Tutt’s overconfidence when facing off with Wild Bill Hickok, Obama may discover John Q is faster on the draw than he thinks. Ask Bill Clinton or any of a score of Democrats rousted over gun control issues in the 1994 election about how dangerous John Q can be with the power of a ballot in hand. For the moment Obama is surrounded by his armed associates, but come November each shall stand alone in the sun, facing the wrath of John Q’s ballot.