I'm gonna get flamed here but I am up for it. Barack Obama is one thing and one thing only...a professional politician. As evidenced by the fact that he managed to get himself elected to the White House twice...while over the last 230 years better men failed many times...he is a capable politician.
He knows gun control is a bad idea for one's political career. He may be a lame duck but he has a political responsibility to all of those other professional politicians that depend on what happens at the White House to get elected. As a professional politician, he realizes that all of this furor over guns, whipped up by a few deeply disturbed psychopaths and a legion of media types, has taken the public discourse down a path I think he does not wish to tread.
The man himself may not care much about guns. I doubt he has any passion at all around the 2nd Amendment. However, I don't think the man has any passion around gun control either. In contrast to Bloomberg and Feinstein for whom that issue is the one that most stirs their passions.
The politician that is Barack Obama is, I think, tear at the podium aside, even less passionate about gun control and in fact fears going there lest he allow the Republican party to climb even part way out of the abyss of irrellevance into which they've allowed themselves to sink. The best way to give his political opposition a leg up is gun control. He knows that.
I believe that this is the beginning of the White House back-peddling on gun control in order to preserve Democratic hegemony over the public political sphere that they are quickly attaining. He does not want that to stop. Please also remember that, while there is some correlation, gun control is not a partisan issue. That I believe one reason why THR is not political. My analysis here is political but it is on topic because I think it is the beginning of a retreat from gun control. How far back will the White House retreat? That's the question.
I'm at your collective mercy.