Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
President Joe Biden has had a couple of days in office, and so far, no gun control executive orders to speak of. Honestly, it’s kind of surprising, really, but also kind of not.
After all, while Democrats hold both chambers of Congress, they have a slim lead in both. That’s not a great environment to ram through controversial legislation, which any gun control measure is sure to be.
However, some–like the Las Vegas Sun editorial board–still believe Biden should move quickly on guns.
According to one widely quoted analysis, the United States military possesses about 4.5 million firearms.
Last year, U.S. civilians purchased nearly that many guns — in a two-month span.
It happened in June and July during the Black Lives Matter protests, when gun sales totaled 4.38 million. Along with spikes in sales around the start of the coronavirus pandemic, gun sales in 2020 had already shattered the annual record by October. That pushed the estimated number of civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. to 393 million.
Those numbers are a reminder of the ongoing importance of gun safety as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., begin their work in 2021. More to the point, the epidemic of deaths and injuries related to that enormous stockpile of weapons should drive new policies to protect Americans from gun-related violence. Last year saw an increase in domestic gun violence, unintentional shootings, gun violence in metropolitan areas and gun suicides, leading to a record 43,000 firearms-related deaths.
President Joe Biden entered office vowing to address the issue with a wide-ranging plan that included establishment of universal background checks, an assault weapons ban and red flag laws. With the Democratic majority in the House and with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tiebreaking vote in the evenly divided Senate, Biden has an avenue to make meaningful progress.
It goes on to list a number of executive orders that Biden could issue that they claim would create an immediate impact.
They wouldn’t, of course, but the media likes to delude themselves while they’re deluding everyone else.
Yet Biden likely believes all those executive orders might actually do some good. He’s on board with the anti-gun agenda and has been for decades. Despite that, he failed to issue even one executive order on guns.
Honestly, it’s because he knows that things are still far too divisive.
Oh, he thinks he’ll get gun control in at some point, but he first wants to lull Americans asleep with his talk of unity, all while still grabbing hold of every progressive policy position he can find. However, a complicit media will, at worse, just complain that he’s not being progressive enough. They won’t call him out or call much attention to anything he’s doing.
Then, later, he’ll start in on guns. He’ll do it when he thinks there won’t be much of anything to lose; when he thinks he or his people have everything arranged so they can go forward.
Of course, that won’t be enough for the anti-gunners, to be sure. They want something now.
I don’t blame them, though. After all, Biden has roughly two years to get this done. If not, well, he’ll run into the midterms. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in Congress during the midterms and that’s something Biden can’t afford if he wants to enact gun control. They know this, hence the urgency.
But right now, Biden isn’t making much in the way of moves in that direction.
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2021/01/22/media-urges-biden-to-move-on-guns/