BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today that President Barack Obama’s “new” agenda on guns is a repackaging of long-standing efforts to go after gun shows and gun owners, and they predict it will backfire like his previous attempts.

Highlighted in his plan is an expansion of background checks that seems to target gun shows, and specifically collectors and hobbyists by threatening to reclassify them as dealers, who need federal licenses. As a result, it appears that gun sales are once again spiking upwards, noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

“Obama wants more background checks and he is only accomplishing it by having more people buy firearms,” Gottlieb said, “because of his anti-gun rights agenda and attacks on the Second Amendment. We now have a record number of background checks done every month. Once again his actions have backfired. Ironically, he’s the reason more people are buying more firearms.”

Gottlieb noted that applications for concealed carry licenses and permits are up all over the country. He added that the Obama administration has had “what seems like an obsession about gun shows” since taking office in 2009.

“The time for penalizing law-abiding firearms owners is long past,” Gottlieb stated. “The president can no longer scapegoat gun shows for crimes committed by people who bought their guns at retail gun shops and went through background checks.

“Twenty years ago,” he said, “the firearms community championed two effective measures to keep criminals off the street, the Three Strikes and Hard Time for Armed Crime measures. Those laws went after the right people, while leaving honest citizens alone to exercise their Second Amendment rights without burdensome government interference.”