Believing that something won't happen, doesn't mean it won't. Many people think that despite the many negative factors that exist, President Barack Obama will barely cross the next presidential election finish line as victor.

Should that happen, among the many facets of his new term will be additional gun control regulations. The facts bear out that a second-term Obama administration will most definitely not be citizen friendly to the Second Amendment.

In 1996, then-Illinois State Sen. Obama answered a gun control questionnaire. He wrote that he supported a complete ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns and assault weapons.

In 1998, he expressed his support for a complete ban on the sale or transfer of all semi-automatic firearms. He supported Illinois law that bans concealed carry permits.

In 1999, Obama endorsed a 500 percent increase in the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition. This was obviously intended to increase the price of gun ownership so drastically as to make it unaffordable for most Americans. Also in 1999, he supported a proposal to ban gun stores within five miles of a school or park. This was a reasonable-sounding scheme that would have had the effect of banning nearly every gun store in America.

In 2000, Obama voted against allowing citizens to violate local weapon bans where self-defense was involved. In 2005, he voted in the U.S. Senate to ban nearly all rifle ammunition in common civilian use.

The point: President Obama's anti-freedom inclinations have not abated. He has merely put them aside temporarily in the pursuit of larger progressive goals. Just because gun control has not had the kind of exposure enjoyed by ObamaCare does not mean it is not part of his agenda.

How will he do it? A second Obama term will involve greater restrictive laws for private citizens' gun ownership. According to the Huffington Post, the Department of Justice has been meeting to plan options for enacting gun controls by bypassing the legislative process though executive orders or regulation making by federal bureaucrats.

Obama will use his appointed, unaccountable czars, who will make up the rules as they go. And he will use the imperial courts. By appointing the right kind of judges or jurisdiction shopping, predictable rulings are easy to obtain. Whatever mischief bureaucrats aren't able to secure often can be accomplished through liberal activist judges.

Even if lower court decisions are eventually and inevitably overturned, the process takes years, and any rulings adverse to Obama's desires usually can be safely ignored.

Remember, you heard it here: Unburdened with the necessity of a second campaign, President Obama will almost certainly go for broke on every item on his progressive wish list. Gun control has always been near the very top of every progressives' wish list, and he is nothing if not a good progressive. The Second Amendment is in great peril.

Tom Smiley
Gainesville