Joe Biden is not trying the fact that he does not do much, sugar.
“We have a long way to go, it seems like we always have a long way to go,” he said on Monday.
What he did on a hot Washington day was to bow before political reality.
The president announced small steps in terms of gun control, because that’s all he could legally push out of executive orders. He was stimulated on the hill and he knows it. There is no way that Congress will even approve a measure for extensive background checks that has strong majority support in the polls.
As if to underscore the futility of Biden’s actions, he acknowledged that he had been reported on Wednesday night for another gun tragedy, this one in South Carolina. Former NFL player Phillip Adams has killed five people, including a doctor who treated him and his family, and then killed himself.
Biden seized the brief moment of momentum following the mass shooting in a Boulder supermarket and spas in Atlanta. The president spoke out, demanded action in connection with his legislation and then dropped the issue.
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It was according to me according to design. Biden did not want to derail his economic packages with big tickets for a fight he was destined to lose. Under Senate rules, it’s easier for him to push through $ 2 billion in spending bills than to close loopholes in the background. And even if he did not face a filibuster threat, Democrats like Joe Manchin are opposed to anything but the most incremental gun measures. In a 50-50 senate, Biden does not have the votes.
No one can doubt Biden’s sincerity on this issue. During his years as vice president, Biden fought hard to pass gun restrictions to Sandy Hook and other tragedies. Congress would not move. That does not seem to matter, even with Democratic control and the NRA going bankrupt.
As the New York Times remarked matter-of-factly: “The initiatives announced Thursday do not match his commitment to the cause during his career, especially not his time as a senator. In 1993, Mr. Biden played a key role. a role in the course of the notorious Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. A year later, he helped authorize a ten-year ban on assault weapons. “
“Biden’s steps come amid growing impatience from gun control activists because the government has not acted faster,” the Washington Post said.
The president has tried to persuade the Conservatives to condemn what he calls ‘false arguments’, arguing for the Constitution. “Nothing, nothing I’m about to recommend, affects the Second Amendment,” he said, adding that no amendment is absolute: “You can not shout fire in a busy theater.”
Perhaps the most important step is the attempt to stem the tide of ‘ghost guns’, those that are assembled at home from different parts in a kit. Biden wants to close this gap by requiring background checks for the purchase of such kits, which manufacture rifles without serial numbers.
The president also wants to extend the gun law to so-called stabilizer struts, which effectively turn a pistol into a short-barreled rifle by improving its accuracy. He noted that the Boulder shooter used such an armrest.
And he will urge states to allow “red flag” laws that allow temptations to temporarily remove firearms from people who are considered dangerous – but that is only a proposal.
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Those who believe in gun rights see any bill or order as a slippery slope to greater government control, and they vote with great intensity. A number of Congressional Democrats lost their seats in 1994 after Bill Clinton passed legislation on gun control.
What Biden did yesterday was try to maintain a street credit with the compound advocates for gun control and such victims as Gabby Giffords. But the media has moved fast after the last mass shooting, and will probably do so again.