Lott recently addressed the president’s incoherent ramblings comments.

In his speech, Biden stated: “Put a pistol on a brace, and it ma- — turns into a gun. Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon — a higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun. It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.”

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If Biden is worried about the dangerous potential of more powerful guns with less recoil, he should also address the various ways they can be obtained apart from stabilizing braces.For example, rifles are powerful weapons — 70 out of 82 bullets used in rifles are ranked as more powerful than a .223. If a criminal wants reduced recoil, he can simply use a rifle — heavier guns dampen the recoil, and rifles weigh more.

What’s more, in guns with short barrels, such as pistols, the bullet leaves the barrel before full pressure is developed and travels at a lower velocity. However, if an attacker wants a more powerful and more compact gun, there are alternatives to handguns. He can easily saw off part of the barrel of the rifle. After all, when facing multiple life sentences for murder, an additional penalty for sawing off the end of a rifle won’t make much difference.

But even Biden’s claim that short-barrel rifles are the weapon of choice for these mass murderers is also ridiculous. Again, only two of the roughly 100 mass public shooters over the last 25 years involved handguns with pistol braces. In 56.4 percent of mass shootings, only handguns were used (no braces), in 14.9 percent, rifles were used, and in 16 percent of attacks, rifles and another type of gun were used.

There’s a lot more there and you should go and read the whole thing, but these few paragraphs are what I’d like to expound on.

First, Lott is absolutely correct in the discussion of how powerful these AR pistols are. The truth is that .223 and 5.56 are not overly powerful rifle rounds in the first place. In fact, neither is legal for hunting deer in many states, and not because it’ll blow a lung out or anything. It’s because it lacks the power to harvest the deer humanely.

Most hunting rifles–the very guns we’re assured no one wants to take away, including by Biden–are far more powerful. If the problem with pistol braces is that they magically make the gun more powerful, then gun control advocates are going to have to address them sooner or later, thus making the claims the guns will be left alone a lie.

And he’s right that a shorter barrel actually reduces the power of these weapons. Sure, with a shotgun, a shorter barrel increases the spread of the shot–not as much as many people think, but it does increase it some–but with a rifle, all it does is prevent the round from reaching its full potential.

So, honestly, all this kvetching over short-barrel rifles is beyond silly. If anything, you’d think they’d want to focus on longer-barrel rifles, but that would require understanding firearms and that’s never going to happen.

Finally, on the subject of mass shootings.

Honestly, that last quoted paragraph needs to be engraved in brass and mounted in every politician’s office, every newsroom, and really anywhere else people want to pontificate on guns.

Over and over again, we’ve been assured that the AR-15 is the preferred weapon for mass shooters. People such as Biden making the claim forget all the lives claimed with handguns in mass shootings–plenty of them, in fact–and focus on the so-called assault weapons.

The problem is and has always been the people pulling the trigger, not what kind of weapon that trigger belongs to.

This has already run on long enough, but the truth is that Biden just got taken to the proverbial woodshed.