President Barack Obama and the usual suspects could not resist using the opportunity afforded by the horrific San Bernardino shooting and the general fear of terrorist attacks to demagogue against Second Amendment rights.

During his rare Oval Office address Sunday, Obama took a detour to talk about gun control measures that would not have done anything to thwart such attacks. “To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun,” he said. “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?” Though the U.S. Senate just rejected such a measure, Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, has promised to introduce a similar proposal at the state level.

But there is a big difference in preventing terrorists from purchasing guns and preventing those merely suspected of having some link to terrorism from purchasing guns, especially through the use of a vague and secretive system with no due process of law. The no-fly list is reportedly up to nearly 700,000 names – about 15 times the 47,000 who were on the list at the beginning of President Obama’s term seven years ago.

It has notoriously included small children, veterans, journalists and politicians, including former Sen. Ted Kennedy, who were innocent victims of clerical errors or having a name the same as, or similar to, someone legitimately suspected of having terrorist ties. Once placed on the list, it is incredibly difficult to prove one’s innocence and have the name removed.

The kind of rifles derided by gun control advocates as “assault weapons” – oftentimes accompanied by descriptions such as “powerful,” “combat weapons” or “weapons of war” – have also once again come into gun grabbers’ crosshairs. Yet, these rifles are no more powerful or rapid-fire than many other guns legally available to citizens. They fire a single round each time the trigger is pulled, and thus are not fully automatic, though the fallacious implication seems to be that they are machine guns. Sales of fully automatic weapons to civilians have been banned for nearly 30 years.

Furthermore, our experience with the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban has demonstrated that such measures are totally ineffective. “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” a definitive study commissioned by the Justice Department concluded in 2004. “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

Recent media coverage notwithstanding, that drop in gun violence has continued for more than 20 years, with gun crimes, including murder, steadily dropping by about 50 percent during this period. According to FBI statistics, murders by rifles of any type (not just “assault weapons”) comprised about 3 percent of all gun homicides last year, and 2 percent of all homicides. In fact, the 248 murders by rifle were fewer than those by blunt objects such as clubs and hammers (435) and “personal weapons” such as one’s hands, fists and feet (660), and far fewer than the number of knife killings (1,567).

President Obama did get one thing right: “But the fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies – no matter how effective they are – cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual is motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology.” Which is precisely why we should have the same tools at our disposal as those who wish to do us harm.

Unilaterally disarming innocent civilians while terrorists and other criminals continue to violate the restrictions we impose on ourselves is not only a violation of our natural and constitutional right to self-defense, it is also an invitation to more carnage and calamity.