Speaker Paul Ryan Blasts Executive Gun Control: ‘The Country Will Not Stand for It’

On January 4 House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a statement characterizing Obama’s pending executive gun control as “overreach” and said, “The country will not stand for it.”

According to Speaker Ryan:

Ever since he was a candidate, President Obama’s dismissiveness toward Americans who value the Second Amendment has been well-documented. He acts as if the right to bear arms is something to be tolerated, when in truth – as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2008 – it is fundamental. The same goes for the Constitution and its limits on executive power.

Ryan went on to point out that the pledge of executive gun control is another instance of Obama “intruding further into innocent Americans’ lives” by pushing new controls onto the backs of the more than 100 million law-abiding gun owners in reaction to the crimes of a handful of criminals. Ryan summed this up by describing it as Obama’s way of “targeting law-abiding citizens.”

Ryan observed, “At a time when the country wants the president to lead the fight against radical Islamic terror, this is yet another attempt to divide and distract from his failed policies.”

Ryan concluded:

While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will. His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally. The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights – all of them. This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.