As someone knee-deep in the gun control debate, I see a lot of patterns.

For example, we know what the gun control argument in the wake of a mass shooting will be. We know it’ll include specific policy recommendations that, frankly, may have nothing to do with the shooting in question. That’s because the shooting isn’t the thing, it’s the regulation that matters.

And then they pretend the regulations never happened and we need new rules the next time.

And, frankly, there’s a lot of dishonesty in that, as Charles C.W. Cooke notes at America’s 1st Freedom:

In April, President Joe Biden (D) climbed atop his high horse and asked a room full of journalists, “How many more Americans must die before Republicans in Congress will act to protect our communities?” This was dishonest to its core. It is true that most Republicans in Congress—and many Democrats, too—have declined to endorse all of Biden’s anti-Second Amendment extremism. But this is not because those lawmakers are uninterested in protecting our communities; it is because those lawmakers understand that nothing that Biden has proposed would serve that end. Biden’s insinuation—that everyone in America secretly knows that he is right, but that only some of them are willing to act on it—is false, morally grotesque and unbecoming of a president of the United States.

It is also extremely self-serving, for Biden seems to already have forgotten—or, rather, he is already pretending to have forgotten—that the federal government passed a whole bunch of counterproductive gun-control measures as recently as last year. In August of 2022, Congress approved a bill called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Biden praised to the hilt.

“I was there 30 years ago, the last time this nation passed meaningful gun-safety laws,” Biden said when the measure emerged from Congress. “And I’m here today for the most-significant law to be passed since then, since—for the last 30 years.”

This was no slip-up. Elsewhere, the bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described the statute as “a breakthrough agreement on gun violence—the first in 30 years—that will save lives,” and as “the most-significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation in nearly 30 years.” Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate majority leader, said that he was “pleased that, for the first time in nearly 30 years, Congress is on the path to take meaningful action to address gun violence.” Gabby Giffords’ take was that 2022 was “the first time in 30 years that Congress takes major action on gun safety.”

Now? It’s as if it never happened.

The truth is that gun control laws fail. They fail with startling regularity, mostly because those they’re supposedly meant to impact aren’t going to follow any laws in the first place, so they skirt the new rules just as quickly as they’re put into place.

Acknowledging that fact would mean jeopardizing gun control in general, now and in the future.

So, they simply pretend it never happened. They ignore the past and act like literally nothing has changed rather than admit that what they tried before didn’t do what they said it would do.

In fairness, I get why they wouldn’t want to do that. Since gun control has never actually worked, that admission would get oddly repetitive.

That doesn’t excuse the dishonesty displayed, though. Not in the least.

Especially since the gun control crowd routinely acts like they’re the voices of reason; like they’re the ones simply going where the data leads them. They’re nothing of the sort.

The gun control emperor has no clothes and everyone is pretending that he does.

Luckily, there are a lot of us who have absolutely no problem calling out this nonsense on a regular basis and not letting them get away with this dishonesty. We actually enjoy doing so, as a matter of fact.