Remember the firestorm that erupted last year when Obama administration consultant and MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber revealed the deception at the heart of the White House’s strategy to pass Obamacare? According to Gruber:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. … Look, I wish … we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

There you have it. The end justifies the means, no matter if it takes outright lies or sleight of hand to “have this law.”

Poll after poll showed that Americans were satisfied with their health care plans. The only way President Obama and his cohorts could sell Obamacare was to conceal the law’s true ramifications and convince those who were already content with their health insurance that they wouldn’t be affected.

You remember the lie: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

Now, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the gun-ban crowd are hoping a “lack of transparency” combined with the “stupidity” of the American gun owner, will help them pass so-called ”universal background checks” in states around the nation.

Obama, Bloomberg, and the national gun-ban media frequently exploit tragedy, using fear and lies to sell their agenda to non-gun owners, especially when it comes to election season. This is their traditional playbook. They target folks who have very little understanding of the Second Amendment, and who have never been exposed to firearms or our hunting and shooting traditions, in their quest to raise money and win votes.

As gun ownership continues to grow in popularity, however, the anti-gunners have increasingly turned to trying to sway actual gun owners to advance their anti-freedom, anti-civil rights agenda.

Sounds incredible, doesn’t it? What gun owners would support policies that are blatantly designed to strip them of their constitutional freedom?

To put it bluntly: gullible gun owners. Uninformed folks who believe Obama and Bloomberg when they say that law-abiding gun owners have nothing to fear with a universal background checks system because it’s only aimed at preventing “gun violence.”

These are outright lies. You know it and I know it. Simply put, violent criminals break the law—any law—every day with impunity.

It’s already a federal crime to engage in the business of selling firearms or ammunition without a federal firearm license. It’s already a crime for licensed firearm dealers to sell a gun at retail without conducting a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check on the purchaser. And, of course, federal law also prohibits felons, those adjudicated mentally ill, drug users and others from purchasing a firearm.

We don’t have to guess how hardened criminals will get their guns if universal background checks are passed, because we already know how they get them now: through theft, black market purchases, criminal associates, and straw purchasers. Background checks cannot and do not stop any of these things.

The plain truth is that universal background checks are designed to put the government squarely in the middle of virtually every firearm transaction that takes place between law-abiding adults. Such proposals seek to criminalize lawful, everyday transfers of firearms just because they happen without a government bureaucrat first rendering his approval and documenting the event. They put nearly every transaction under the thumb of the government.

So if you wanted to lend a shotgun or rifle to your hunting buddy for the weekend, or hand down a cherished family heirloom to a cousin, or even if you wanted to lend a firearm to a loved one in danger, you would be forced to get permission from the government, or face criminal charges. Under the measure recently passed in Washington State, participants in the classroom portion of a gun safety class can’t even hand unloaded firearms to each other. How does that prevent gun violence?

Worst of all, the only way universal background checks can be enforced is through mandatory gun registration. In fact, Obama’s own Justice Department reported that a viable background check system for private sales “depends” on “requiring gun registration.”

You read that right. The whole scheme is a Trojan horse for mandatory gun registration. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the only way to fully enforce universal background checks is to force all law-abiding gun owners to document and register their firearms in a government database. Think about it. How else are they supposed to know when the background check requirement has been triggered, unless they can match every firearm to a documented gun owner.

That’s why Bloomberg and his billionaire buddies spent millions upon millions of dollars to pass Initiative 594 in the state of Washington last November. At its core, I-594 is nothing more Obama’s backdoor gun registration scheme that NRA members like you fought so hard to defeat just two years ago in the U.S. Senate.

It’s also why Bloomberg announced a major offensive to pass this scheme state-by-state, with Nevada the next target, until universal background checks and mandatory gun registration become an inescapable reality for all Americans.

It’s a nightmare for every law-abiding gun owner and should serve as a wake-up call for every one of us to say “never in my state.”

As an NRA member, I know that you’re well-informed and won’t be duped.

But gun owners who are not NRA members don’t read our magazines, nor do they receive our legislative alerts and e-mails, leaving them vulnerable to falling for Bloomberg’s and Obama’s lies.

You and I must expose the truth about universal background checks to every gun owner we know to make certain that a “lack of transparency” and “stupidity” don’t end up costing us our freedom!

Wayne’s column appears in the NRA publications American Rifleman, American Hunter and America’s First Freedom. Protect your gun rights – click here to join the NRA at a discounted rate.

