The White House said late Tuesday night that President Biden would do everything possible to reduce gun violence in the US, stressing that thoughts and prayers alone will not resolve the issue.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Americans were “scarred by the devastating effects” of the recent gun violence.

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“These are just the shootings that made national headlines,” Jean-Pierre said. “In other cases, we may not know the names of the victims, but we grieve equally with their families and communities. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of each of the victims.”

The press secretary explained that thoughts and prayers are not enough to curb gun violence in America and that Biden will call on Congress to tighten existing gun laws.

The problem here is that the White House doesn’t understand the problem in the first place.

These aren’t law-abiding citizens who suddenly decided to flip out and shoot people, then go get a gun to do so. These are generally career criminals, people who are already lawfully prevented from buying or owning a gun.

We’re not talking about people who are going into gun stores. They’re stealing guns or buying them on the black market, ignoring literally every bit of gun control you care to name or concoct.

Crime is the issue here. This is a real thing and it’s motivated by people, not guns.

Let’s not forget that part of the problem has been rampant and unpunished shoplifting in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. That, too, is crime, and it’s part of the overall issue.

There are no guns involved at all in that.

But the Biden administration is so preoccupied with gun control that they can’t see the problem. They seem to believe that if you just made the guns go away, everything would be better. The problem is, Americans actually are more violent than people in other countries. Make the guns go away and our knife crime rate soars.

A violent criminal doesn’t need a gun to be a violent criminal. They’ll use what they’ve got at hand. If that’s just a rock, they’ll use a rock. You’re not going to legislate away their ability to cause carnage.

That’s not how violent crime works.

No, if you want to stop violent crime, you have to start with the people who commit it. You’ve got to understand what’s driving them and how to short-circuit that desire in the first place. Laws won’t stop it, you need something more, something beyond a simple ban on a firearm.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration isn’t really interested in stopping violent crime. That’s not their brand by any stretch.

What they want are policies that stop you.

Regardless of whether it’s by design or happenstance, they want gun control that will only impact people like you and me. They want to restrict our ability to buy and carry a firearm. They want to restrict what kinds of firearms we own.

All of that means they want to make it harder for us to defend ourselves from violent crime.

So yeah, I think thoughts and prayers aren’t going to cut it, but the White House’s myopic view of guns as somehow the cause of our problems isn’t going to cut it either.