By now, we’re all quite familiar with the usual cycle of a mass shooting followed by more gun control followed by a mass shooting followed by more gun control, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
One would think that by now our “enlightened” political leadership would have figured out that gun control doesn’t work. It seems that despite all these decades of gun control, mass shootings seem to be happening more frequently — especially when you count the ones that don’t make national headlines.
Joe Biden predictably called for more gun control after the mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas. To him, the blame rests on the “gun lobby,” but he also accidentally proved that gun control doesn’t work.
“I spent my career as a senator and as Vice President working to pass commonsense gun laws,” Biden claimed.
So he accidentally admitted the failure of decades of gun control to end gun violence, and somehow concluded that was something to brag about? Of course, Biden isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, so it’s not like I expected him to realize that when his life’s work hasn’t yielded the desired results, that’s not a good thing.
Aside from not realizing that he was bragging about his own failures, Biden took the usual route of lying through his teeth, making the oft-repeated claim that the 1994 “assault weapons” ban succeeded in reducing mass shootings, and saying that when the law expired mass shootings went back up. This has been debunked for years, but that hasn’t stopped the gun control nuts from making the claim repeatedly.
As David Harsanyi recently wrote, certain political leaders are too focused on doing stuff that won’t work just to do something. Mass shootings have commonalities. The shooters always showed concerning behaviors, and most told at least one person of their plan in advance.
“Rather than focusing on these tangible entry points for potentially useful legislation, instead of proposing ideas on better identifying shooters before they act, instead of thinking about how schools could be structurally safer, instead of debating the efficacy of putting more cops in schools — and none of these are panaceas, mind you — Senate Democrats were busy dunking on Republicans for failing to support bills that have absolutely zero to do with mass shootings.”
Sometimes even left-wing papers can admit this, too. Surprisingly, Amber Phillips of the Washington Post conceded the point in Thursday’s issue of the paper’s newsletter, The 5-Minute Fix, that there’s little proof more gun control would reduce violent crime.
Phillips does give lip service to the usual left-wing talking points, such as the claim that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect individual rights to bear arms, but she nevertheless concedes that the “evidence is thin” that more gun control “would quickly and dramatically reduce rates of gun violence.”
She also pointed out that there have been instances where guns have been used to save lives. She didn’t cite any examples, of course, but I did recently, if you’re interested in reading about a few of them.
Related: No Gun Control Proposal Would Have Prevented Tuesday’s Tragedy in Uvalde
The Daily Caller points out that the Washington Post‘s editorial board has advocated for stricter gun laws a lot over the years. But still, the first step of breaking the cycle is admitting that what has been tried and failed in the past likely isn’t going to succeed when you try it again. Maybe this bold concept will catch on?
We’ve had decades of more gun control not working. Let’s focus on the people, not the guns. Guns have been around throughout our nation’s history. Let’s not pretend they are the problem that needs fixing.