On Tuesday, President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union speech. It’s the annual moment where pomp and circumstance infects Congress in an era when the whole thing should really just be an email.

But it happened and here we are.

The NSSF, however, has a few issues with some things Biden said. You see, the president didn’t give the whole story.

President Biden scolded Congress for not sending him legislation to renew this unconstitutional ban on these commonly-owned commonly-used rifles. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in the Heller, McDonald and Bruen decisions that any such ban is unconstitutional.

What President Biden didn’t tell the American public – and won’t – is what the rest of America is saying about any proposed ban. Over half the country doesn’t want it, according to a recent poll by ABC News/Washington Post.

Cratering Support

Respondents to the poll released just days before the State of the Union speech showed that 51 percent surveyed oppose any such ban. That’s a 10-point increase from 2019 when the same question was asked. Just 47 percent of those responding – a nine point drop – voiced support for banning MSRs, the second lowest percentage reported since the question was put forth in the polls starting in 1995.

That’s not something President Biden will admit to the American public. Instead, he stuck to his worn-out tropes to demonize the rifle as he’s repeatedly done in the past. He called it an “assault weapon.” It’s not. The MSR is a semiautomatic rifle that operates the same way as popular duck hunting shotguns and semiautomatic handguns used every day for personal protection. One cartridge is expended each time the trigger is pressed.

Now, in fairness, I don’t actually expect a sitting president to acknowledge that one of his pet policies is unpopular with the American public during the State of the Union speech.

But his refusal to acknowledge it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Support for a new assault weapon ban has been dropping for quite some time, and there’s little reason to believe that won’t continue. This despite the horrific events at Uvalde, which should have given gun control advocates a significant boost.

Why?

Well, that’s probably something we’d have to look into, but it seems to me that with Uvalde, most people recognize the law enforcement failure that took place. It’s hard to blame the weapon when the police pretty much just sat outside and let everything happen.

Then there’s the fact that two mass shootings took place in California, a state with an assault weapon ban, and plenty of other gun control laws as well. The killers in both cases used pistols, thus illustrating that banning AR-15s won’t prevent mass shootings at all.

Either way, Biden can ask for whatever he wants. What he’s not getting, though, is a new assault weapon ban. Not only is there no interest in such a thing in the House, but there’s also no interest in it among the American people, either.

That should be something the rest of us call “a clue.”