Guest column: Gun rights are about freedom

As a lifelong sportsman and gun owner, I’m committed to protecting law-abiding Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. And like many Montanans, I know that protecting the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting — it’s about freedom.

President Barack Obama started off the new year by unilaterally creating new barriers to purchasing a firearm. His actions are an affront to our Second Amendment rights and a gross abuse of executive power.

And like so many times before, Obama has pursued a “go-it-alone” approach on his gun control agenda. These are the same proposals that the U.S. Senate rejected under the Harry Reid-led Senate in 2013.

Without the backing of Congress or the American people, the president has taken the decision into his own hands — much like he did when he stopped the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, issuing executive orders on illegal immigration and pushing forward job-killing EPA regulations.

The fact is that the regulations in the president’s new gun control measures would have done nothing to prevent the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Aurora or Sandy Hook.

While the motivations behind these senseless acts differed, all were used by politicians to pursue misguided firearm restrictions while doing nothing to address the most significant factors behind violent crime.

Under the president’s gun control agenda, Americans selling even a single gun could be required to go through the bureaucracy and expense of getting a Federal Firearms License leading to universal background checks.

The president’s new regulations give no clarity on who is required to get a license, leaving that discretion to the courts and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — the same agency responsible for the Fast and Furious gun running scheme that gave firearms to violent Mexican drug cartels. Those who don’t comply with the new laws will be hit with an unreasonable penalty of $250,000 and up to five years in prison.

The new system gives no clarity on how added resources should be used and leaves the new regulations in the National Firearms Act ripe for federal government abuse.

Instead of working to address the root cause of gun violence and mass shootings — like focusing on care for mental health care and addressing radical Islamic terrorists and Jihadists — Obama has unilaterally decided to undermine the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

These new gun control provisions seek to make the federal government the sole arbitrator of who can and cannot own a gun, with little or no recourse.

When it comes to our right to keep and bear arms, Americans see the writing on the wall. In fact, more guns were sold in December than in almost any other month in the previous two decades.

As I’ve said before, the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun – not by creating situations where crowds and offices are defenseless to acts of unspeakable violence and terror.

I've repeatedly stood up to efforts to restrict Montanans' freedoms and voted against any legislation that threatens our rights to keep and bear arms.

As Montana’s voice in the U.S. Senate, I’ll continue fighting against Obama’s endless assault on Montanans’ Second Amendment rights and any efforts to infringe upon our constitutional freedoms.

(Sen. Steve Daines is a Republicans from Montana.)