Taking a cue from no less an expert than Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama — and other anti-Second Amendment advocates — are riding the coattails of the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, shamelessly to press their gun-control agenda.

During a European visit in 2009, Secretary of State Clinton admonished a group of young people to use the economic crisis then-still gaining steam to press their political agendas. Clinton proudly noted Obama was doing just that to move his so-called “green agenda” to combat climate change. In an unusual display of candor, Clinton lectured her audience to “never waste a good crisis” to push a pet political project.

Taking Clinton’s advice, anti-gun politicians are seizing on the tragedy that took place in Aurora — where a lone gunman murdered a dozen people in cold blood and wounded 53 others — to try and foist new gun control measures on Americans.

Within hours of the July 20 shooting rampage at the Aurora movie theater, cries to reinstate the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” (signed into law by Clinton’s husband in 1994), began making the rounds. During a press conference Tuesday, anti-firearms Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) proclaimed, “This is the perfect opportunity to get something done (on gun control).”

Another irrepressible anti-gun crusader — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — demanded that both Obama and Republican nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney place gun control on the front burner of their campaigns. In what truly is one of the most idiotic and irresponsible pronouncements ever by a public official, Bloomberg then proposed that police officers go on strike until more gun laws are enacted. Hizzoner later tried to “explain” his remarks to mean something other than what he very clearly stated to CNN’s Piers Morgan. But the thrust of Bloomberg’s words was clear — citizens who do not demand stricter gun control measures do not deserve police protection.

Obama tried initially to stay out of the post-Aurora gun-control spotlight; but his true instincts got the better of him. At a New Orleans campaign event Wednesday, the president proclaimed that the mass murder highlighted the need to enact tougher firearms background checks.

Mimicking one of the canards favored by the anti-Second Amendment crowd, the president decreed that “an AK-47 belongs in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals,” as if criminals routinely employed such rifles, which they do not; and as if U.S. military uses the AK-47, which it does not.

The most frequent cry in the nation’s capital is that Congress should react to the shooting by reviving the “assault weapons” ban, which expired in 2004. That discredited law banned hundreds of firearms based on little more than the views of its prime sponsor — California’s uber-liberal Sen. Dianne Feinstein — that such firearms looked mean.

With families in Colorado grieving over the loss of loved ones, the thought of playing politics with this tragedy is truly sickening. But such concerns have not in the wake of past similar shootings caused anti-gun officials to pause; and this most recent act of a crazed “creep” (as writer Bob Tyrrell aptly labeled the Aurora shooter in a recent townhall.com column) is no exception.

Thankfully, law-abiding Americans see through this gun control fog, and increasingly are not swayed by such emotion-laced rhetoric.

Even after the shooting last year in Tucson, Arizona which severely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, support for stricter gun control continued to show a decline from previous years. As Chris Cillizza noted last week in the Washington Post, a Pew Research study found that less than half those surveyed — 45 percent — believed controlling gun ownership was more important than the right to own a firearm.

The perpetrator who carried out the cowardly attack in Aurora appears clearly to be worthy of swift justice and capital punishment.

The law-abiding citizen who wishes to avail himself of the right to self-defense guaranteed by the Second Amendment, is not the one who should be punished.

The American people understand this; President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, and their liberal friends, do not — and never will.

The deficiency in understanding both human nature and American history reflected in views such as theirs, is reason sufficient to remove them from office.

Former U.S. Attorney and Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) is on the board of the National Rifle Association