President Joe Biden during a 2020 presidential campaign stop in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Paris Malone / Shutterstock.com)
February 04, 2021
By Larry Keane
President Joe Biden is making good on one part of his "unity" pledge. He's getting the band back together to sing to America why he wants more gun control. The problem is he's out of tune with America. That's just the first problem. There's a whole lot more that's off key.
The Band
President Biden already installed Susan Rice as his White House Domestic Policy Advisor. She served in the Obama White House as National Security Advisor when she went on the Sunday morning television circuit following the Benghazi terror attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. She lied to the American public about the cause of the attacks, blaming it on a video. Mark "Oz" Geist, who was seriously wounded in the attack, recently penned a column in The Federalist warning that she's ready to throw gun rights off the tour bus.
Rice has some backstage VIP passes for gun control allies. She's ready to bring them in as backup singers. An MSNBC Sunday morning show posed a question by March for Our Lives' David Hogg as to when the Biden administration was going to take up gun control. Rice responded, "We are not going to drop the ball on gun violence, and I admire the work that David and so many others in the March Four Our Lives have done to bring attention to this issue. We will be their partners in addressing this challenge."
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Bearing Arms' Cam Edwards pointed out that the key word in the platitudes and non-answer Rice served up was "partners." Hogg's March for Our Lives, funded by antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, demanded during the presidential campaign that he gets a desk right outside the Oval Office. The group's proposal was to create a "cabinet-adjacent" national director of gun violence prevention that reports directly to the president. Gun control groups Brady United, Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords echoed similar demands, including a naming a gun control czar.
Roadies
The White House might be assembling the stage talent for this cacophony, but the incoming Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is getting the road crew ready to set up the performance stage. Sen. Durbin tweeted , "Today I had the chance to speak with a group of gun violence prevention advocates from across the country. I told them that reducing gun violence will be a top priority of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And I will never stop fighting for gun safety."
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Sen. Durbin ignores that he's from a state with among the strictest gun control laws in America and a soaring homicide rate in Chicago, the nation's third largest city. Clearly, gun control isn't working there, and Sen. Durbin can't understand that criminals ignore his gun control laws.
Top 10 Charts
What the Biden administration, Susan Rice and Sen. Durbin gloss over is Americans voted over 21 million times in 2020 that they wanted their gun rights. They did this each time they submitted to an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check for the purchase of a firearm. In President Biden's first month in office, another 2 million NICS checks were performed for the sale of a gun, the most ever recorded in a January. In fact, three of the top 10 weeks for NICS checks came during January 2021 and one day broke into the top 10 days for NICS checks. That's competing against the record-shattering year of 2020. So far in the last 13 months, nine out of the top 10 weeks for NICS checks were recorded.
Americans don't want gun control. They want their personal safety and their right to protect themselves. President Biden might be getting the gun control band back together, but they're singing from yesteryear's songbook. They're out of tune with America.