As Joe Biden’s approval rating continues its downward slide, the president is grasping at anything and everything he can possibly use to energize the Democrats’ base of support, and as we’ve predicted, the White House is once again turning to gun control in a bid to improve the party’s chances of avoiding a red wave election in November.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden is set to head to New York City next week to sit down with Mayor Eric Adams, with fighting crime the focus of their conversation. For both men, however, combatting crime means going after guns and legal gun owners instead of concentrating on the actual perpetrators of violence.
Beyond gun control, however, the meeting will provide both Biden and Adams with the opportunity to distance themselves from the defund-the-police rhetoric that has turned off many voters, though that strategy comes with risks of its own given that Biden can’t afford to demoralize the far-left activists that have been demanding a “re-imagining” of the criminal justice system and policing in the United States.
“We shouldn’t be cutting funding for police departments. I’ve proposed increasing funding,” Mr. Biden said last week during a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Mr. Adams, a former police captain who during his campaign referred to himself as the “Biden of Brooklyn,” promised to restore public safety during a crowded Democratic primary last year in which he defeated several candidates who called for defunding the police.
On Monday, Mr. Adams said he would revive—but modify—plainclothes New York City police units that were disbanded in 2020 as part of this response.
He also asked for changes to state laws on bail and the treatment of youthful offenders as well as federal legislation to expand required background checks for gun purchasing and stiffer penalties for gun trafficking.
“No matter how effectively we get guns off our streets, more just keep coming in. The Iron Pipeline keeps them coming,” he said.
So basically, the messaging is going to be “We don’t hate cops. We hate guns.” And as POLITICO notes, while Adams is bringing back a unit targeting illegal gun possession, the Supreme Court is poised to target the gun permitting laws in New York that prevent average citizens from exercising their right to bear arms in self-defense.
Two NYPD officers were fatally shot in Harlem on Friday, the latest in a spate of high-profile crimes. In response to the shooting, Adams called for federal help to crack down on gun trafficking. “We need Washington to act now to stop the flow of weapons into our cities,” he said.
But the city is also facing a possible federal threat to its anti-gun efforts: The Supreme Court is preparing to rule on whether to throw out New York laws that require firearm owners to show a particular, unusual need to get a permit to carry a gun outside the home. Conservative justices seemed inclined to throw out the laws.
Umm, the city should face federal threats to its anti-gun efforts, because they clearly violate the constitutional rights of New York residents. In fact, POLITICO’s framing perfectly highlights the fundamental flaw in both Adams’ and Biden’s crime-fighting strategy: focusing on people who aren’t committing violent crimes.
We don’t combat drunk driving by making it harder to legally drive sober. We don’t fight property crime by making it harder to lawfully own property. So why do Democrats insist on fighting crime by making it harder for people to legally own firearms?
Well, my theory is that crime is a secondary concern for these Democrats , who are much more worried about the growing popularity of gun ownership and the embrace of our Second Amendment rights by millions of Americans over the past couple of years. The increase in violent crime may be the justification given for their latest push to enact new gun control laws, but even when crime was at 50-year lows back in 2019 the left was still intent on stripping us of our Second Amendment rights. Regardless of what the crime rate looks like at any given time, gun control advocates like Biden and Adams believe there are just too many guns and too many gun owners out here, and they won’t be satisfied until they’ve turned the text of the Second Amendment into a dead letter.
Personally, I think that’s not only an exercise in futility, but it’s an unconscionable strategy that only exacerbates violent crime while depriving individuals of their right to self-defense. If Democrats don’t really give a damn about either, though, that’s not much of a reason for them to change course, and Biden and Adams are likely going to emerge from their confab next week in lockstep agreement on their anti-gun and anti-Second Amendment ideology and strategies going forward.
