This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 16th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

You may recall in the film The American President, just moments after declaring he was a member of the ACLU, the President declared

he was prepared to go door to door to, quote, get the guns.

President Obama did not offer Americans what Cato's Tim Lynch calls an Andrew Shepard moment.

Instead, we got some small changes to how the executive branch will deal with gun purchases

and ownership and a legislative agenda clearly constrained by the Bill of Rights.

Some people were expecting what you described as an Andrew Shepard moment

out of the president with regard to his gun control proposals but it didn't really happen.

What did we get instead?

Well, the Andrew Shepard moment was liberals were looking for a really strong

defender to go out and get after the guns,

not just assault weapons bans, but also a ban on all handguns because

anybody that knows the subject knows that most of the murders committed by guns in the United States are done with handguns.

So for those who are really strong proponents of gun control, they want a president to go and get the guns.

And President Obama didn't do that. What he proposed was a ban on

assault weapons, which is somewhat short of where a lot of people in the gun control

movement want to go. Had the Heller case not occurred, of course the case bankrolled by Cato's Chairman Bob Levy

and argued by Alan Gura and also Clark Neely working on that case.

Would we be in a different position right now,

would the president be in a strikingly different position

had the Heller case not having?

...