Bill Maher, the sharp-tongued HBO host who’s no stranger to left-leaning jabs, dropped a rare truth bomb on Friday’s Real Time by pining for Barack Obama’s deportation era—while admitting that a lot of the people he deported did not have criminal records. It’s a candid slip from a guy who usually champions open borders, highlighting how Obama’s administration ramped up removals to over 3 million during his two terms, peaking at 409,849 in 2012 alone. Maher’s nostalgia ignores the optics: Obama earned the nickname Deporter-in-Chief from immigrant advocates, yet his policy targeted non-criminals alongside gang members, often via interior enforcement and workplace raids that swept up long-term residents without felonies.
This Maher moment underscores a delicious irony for the 2A community—Democrats who now clutch pearls over Trump’s promised mass deportations were cheering (or at least tolerating) similar scale under Obama, when ICE was deporting record numbers without the xenophobe label sticking quite as hard. Context matters: Obama’s deportations included many with minor or no records, prioritizing public safety rhetoric that conveniently blurred lines, much like how anti-gun statists today demand universal background checks while overlooking how illegal immigrants—often funneled through sanctuary cities—bypass NICS entirely and fuel black-market firearms trafficking. FBI data shows non-citizens involved in a disproportionate share of gun crimes in border states, yet policies that shield them from deportation exacerbate risks to law-abiding gun owners.
The implications for Second Amendment advocates are stark: inconsistent immigration enforcement doesn’t just strain resources; it directly threatens our rights by inflating urban crime waves where defensive carry is a daily necessity. If Maher wants Obama’s playbook revived, 2A folks should demand the full package—secure borders first, then talk reform. Anything less is just performative politics, leaving armed citizens to clean up the mess left by porous policies. Time to remind the left: consistency isn’t their strong suit, but self-defense is ours.
