Despite our diametrically opposed positions, President Obama gave a helluva speech yesterday, announcing and then defending ten sweeping Executive Actions he said were designed to prevent gun violence, but in fact only expand gun controls on law-abiding citizens. Mr. Obama may have played fast-and-loose with the truth, and distorted -or ignored troublesome facts when they didn't fit the narrative, but there was little doubt the President brought his oratorical "A" game- for the first time in months - to the East Room of the White House yesterday morning. All the old tropes and catch phrases were used, although the frequent use of "common sense" was far outweighed by the new phrase "reasonable." "We must do something" was also still alive and well, as well. But Mr. Obama also pulled out off the gloves and used the "L-word" when calling on Congress to have the courage to stand up to the lies of that time-worn bogeyman -"the gun lobby". You know, the "well-organized" "highly motivated" and "heavily funded" group that he would have you believe gleefully trades American lives for profit while capitalizing on the "fact" that "anyone can buy a semi-auto weapon- easily." Mr. Obama's call for more regulations and restrictions on those "easy" gun sales appear to have been delivered with a near tent-revival sincerity by the President and received the same way by the carefully-selected audience in attendance. But his preaching to the gun control choir about the need to "get out the vote to let Congress know they might face reelection problems" should they not join in the efforts to further gut the Bill of Rights seems to have motivated average Americans to vote with their second most powerful weapon: their wallets. His promise to "do something about gun control" (after his latest Hawaiian vacation) was credited with helping fuel the largest Black Friday gun sales and December NICS checks- ever. Yesterday's announcement of his 10-point action plan to curb gun violence seems to have kicked off an even more frantic buying frenzy nationwide. From Salt Lake City, Utah, to Miami, Florida, harried dealers I spoke with told me that already brisk sales went to torrid levels- "just minutes after the President's remarks." Always opportunistic, Wall Street checked in as well, driving both Ruger and Smith & Wesson stocks to new highs. At yesterday's close of trading on Wall Street, Smith & Wesson (NYSE: SWHC) closed at $25.86/share- $2.58/per share - or 11.08% higher. Ruger (NYSE: RGR) closed at $65.54/share -up $4.11/per share- a one-day price increase of 6.7%. Over the past year, Ruger has moved from a January 6, 2015 price of $35.75 to yesterday's $65.54 (and higher in after-hours action). Over that same year, Smith & Wesson has streaked from $9.41/share to yesterday's $25.86 close. As one gleeful analyst told stunned MSNBC hosts "those numbers bury any other percentile increases in the markets." Those immediate -and negative responses - to calls for further gun controls (I'm told) were completely unexpected by most anti-gun groups. They'd expected the exact opposite response to Mr. Obama's impassioned call for "reasonable steps" to "stop gun violence." Instead, they unintentionally added more fuel to the fire seemingly ignited in average Americans already concerned their right to buy a gun will be further- and needlessly -complicated by an even more invasive big government. Pro-gun groups, while angered at once again being characterized as liars who indirectly the cause of the actions of the deranged and criminally inclined, tell me (quietly) that the President's remarks may actually do more than simply push gun sales in the short-term. His candid admission that both the ATF and NICS sadly need overhauls and modernization-and his pledge to provide that modernization and to bolster ATF agents "for the purpose of enforcing existing gun laws" proved two key assertions the industry has made for some time: the ATF isn't mission capable and "Fix NICS" is more than a cute catchphrase. But the biggest boost to pro-gun groups may have been Mr. Obama's frank admission that -despite the continued claim that "guns are the problem"- America has a mental health care crisis. By the President's own remarks, he admitted it was far larger than the "gun problem" - and he pledged $500 million in funding to help states try and address their broken mental health systems. A battle in the courts over Mr. Obama's obvious intent to mental health as a disqualification point for firearms ownership- or a method to remove guns from existing owners is a certainty. But there's little doubt that yesterday's remarks put "mental health" into the discussion. Anti-gun groups have long tried to avoid that conversation. That's a decided difference between the pro-gun assertion that mental health is the issue and both Mr. Obama and the State of California's thinking that "mental health concerns" trump an individual's right to firearms ownership -and privacy. But Mr. Obama has shifted some of the focus from the tools of mass murderers to the undeniable mental health issues behind those heinous acts. Further complicating the anti-gun intent, legal observers are careful to point out that Mr. Obama's calls for gun seizures like those in California's law or disqualifications based on mental health "concerns" ignore a critical legal component: due process. Meanwhile, an infuriated Congress has promised "legal challenges" to a President House Majority Leader Paul Ryan says is "entirely too-willing to ignore both the legal and legislative processes" when things don't go his way. Mr. Obama's announced Executive Actions yesterday have defined the immediate battlefield for gun rights. In a defined battlefield-especially one where assertions will likely need to be proven in courts of law, the facts of the matter have always managed to trump the heat of emotion. So long as those eventual legal process remain free of politicization or political correctness, there's still hope for us all. And the American people, through their actions with their wallets, have definitely let their elected officials in Washington know where they stand on the issue of gun ownership in America. --Jim Shepherd