Described as “imminent,” the set of executive actions would fulfill a promise by the President to take further unilateral steps the White House says could help curb gun deaths.

Planning for the action are not yet complete, and those familiar with the process warn that unforeseen circumstances could delay an announcement. But gun control advocates are expecting the new actions to be revealed next week, ahead of Obama’s annual State of the Union address, set for January 12.

Obama appears to be focusing on two things. One is to spend more money on enforcing existing gun laws. I’m cool with that. The second would be to change the definitions of things to expand background checks for private sales or the so-called “gun show loophole.”

Here’s the issue in a nutshell… businesses that sell guns are required to conduct a background check before selling it. Private sellers are not. So if Uncle Ben wants to trade his ol’ shotgun for a snow blower with his neighbor, he is not required to do a background check on the neighbor. The gun show aspect is a farce that liberals use to drum up anti-gun sentiment by showing pictures of gun shows with their rows and rows of guns for sale. But in reality, the vast majority of sellers at a gun show are businesses and conduct background checks just like everyone else. So what the anti-gun folks are really after is requiring background checks for the private sales of guns.

Why is this a problem? There are three reasons. The first is that it creates an additional expense and hassle for people who haven’t done anything wrong. Uncle Ben is not the problem. The second reason is that while inconveniencing law-abiding folks, it will have virtually no impact on crooks. The bad guys will still sell guns illegally to each other. Many of them are already felons and not allowed to have a gun and that’s not stopping them. Why would this? So it’s a measure that imposes cost ant inconvenience on good guys while not deterring the bad guys at all. No thanks.

The third reason folks like me oppose requiring background checks for private sales is because it is a path to a gun registry, and a gun registry is an instrument used by tyrants throughout modern history to disarm the citizenry. Instead of forcing people to actually go down the court house and register their guns, background checks get there through the side door by creating a record of every time a gun is transferred. It would take a generation for almost every lawful gun in the country to be registered – just the lawful ones, because the crooks’ guns would still not be cataloged.

Remember that the 2nd Amendment is not about hunting or self-protection… it’s about an armed citizenry maintaining the capacity to violently overthrow their government if it becomes necessary. As the Declaration states:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

That’s hard to do if the people are arming themselves with plastic garden rakes.

So in the end, what Obama and his anti-liberty cohorts are wanting to do is impose additional costs and restrictions on law-abiding people that will have no impact on actually reducing crimes committed with guns while creating a precursor for a future tyrant to disarm Americans.

As I said before… no thanks.