See? See?

I can tell from some of the pixels...

The President can shoot.* So he's not really a pansy after all.

So the White House has answered the incredulity of shooters with actual photographic evidence: yes, Mr. President knows which side of the rifle goes against his shoulder.  Touche'. But there's one thing that the left-wing White House mockers, with their "skeet birther" tweets,** will not say: Obama has just admitted defeat.  His calls for gun control lose as well.  Just like when that effete dufus the GOP recently offered up for President felt that he had to lie about being a hunter and ended up prostrate before the NRA, when the real President has to lie about being a shooter, and posts pics of him pretending to be a shooter, he has legitimized the very thing he personally hates or at least fears. He has stated that he is a man, an American man, because he shoots. He should be sitting on a white horse on a beach, he's so manly. He has forfeited the gun control battle, because gun control is predicated on guns being fringe, the NRA being fringe, and shooting being something only right-wing wackos do.*** Guns need to be something no American needs; Obama has admitted they are something no American should be without.

In trying to show that he is "one of us," he has undercut the very "otherness" that is necessary to demonize guns and gun owners. So now he can talk about violence, because no one legitimizes violence against the innocent. He might be able to talk about the "gun show loophole" since his non-shooter focus groups don't understand it, though I doubt the courts will find enough stretchy space in the Interstate Commerce Clause to control this intra-personal commerce,**** even if it got through the House, which it won't. But so long as the anti-gunners are forced to play the "guns are good and manly and American but this one gun is bad" game, they are no more effective at actually controlling guns than they are at actually controlling the drugs they don't like.

That doesn't mean that they can't pass a law against some scary-looking guns, not because they are more dangerous than legal guns, but because they look scary. Scary still works. But that is the absolute best they can do, and can only do so if many, many things go their way.

Don't let those things go their way.  That is all.

* Well, he can fire a gun, there's a difference.
** These people honestly have no idea how idiotic they sound.  Why would anyone seriously assert that the White House would need to photoshop a picture of the President doing what every other American man does as a matter of course? Firing a gun for a camera is simply not that hard to do. Even David Plouffe might be able to pull it off.
*** It may still be something only right-wing wackos do well, however.
**** I don't doubt it enough to wager money, but still.