A young man named Evan Todd, who is a survivor and eyewitness of the Columbine massacre, has written an open letter to the President urging him to reconsider his support of Federal gun-rights infringements. You can read it here.
One quibble: arguing against universal background checks, Mr. Todd asks “is a universal background check system possible without universal gun registration? If so, please define it for us.”
Strictly speaking, I can’t see why this would be an impossibility; inquiring into a person’s background and registering a subsequent gun-sale are logically distinct. But his other arguments — that universal background checks both expand the Federal bureaucracy and create a swelling black market — are right. He might also have pointed out that controlling the criteria for rejecting applicants can easily become part of the apparatus of tyranny, resistance to which is precisely why the Second Amendment exists in the first place, and why its plain text insists that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed”.
Anyway, the letter is worth reading; it’s here. It won’t make a damn bit of difference, of course, to Mr. Obama’s outlook, but these things are always good for morale, and for stiffening our resolve.