President Joe Biden has a bad habit of calling for various bits of gun control before the facts of a shooting are even known. The mainstream media gives him a pass on this, because of course they do, but we all know how things will play out and how little what he calls for actuall means.

Following the DOJ’s report on Uvalde, the president once again called for gun control. At least this time, we know what happened first, but the Biden plan largely ignores the bulk of the report which found the shooting to be a law enforcement failure.

Over at The Federalist, John Lott takes a look at Biden’s plan. It’s not all he does and you should go read the whole thing, but we’re going to focus on the policy proposals.

Biden’s Useless Strategy

Universal Background Checks

President Joe Biden is pushing a few gun-control proposals in light of the Justice Department’s new report. His first proposal is for “universal” background checks on private transfers of guns. But the Uvalde murderer didn’t obtain the gun through a private transfer, and he passed a federal background check.

There isn’t one mass shooting in this century that universal background checks would have stopped, but don’t expect Democrats’ accomplice media to challenge the Biden administration on that.

‘Red-Flag’ Laws

Biden’s second proposal is to impose “red-flag” laws that allow judges to temporarily confiscate guns from people who might endanger themselves or others. All 50 states already have civil commitment laws that allow for such confiscation. Unlike red-flag laws, however, civil commitment laws provide for evaluations by mental health experts and emergency court hearings with free legal counsel provided. Judges also have recourse to more temperate options, such as mandatory outpatient mental health care, which doesn’t infringe on people’s freedom to the degree that firearms confiscation does.

With red-flag laws, the judge sees only a written complaint before making his decision. The judge doesn’t talk to any of the parties involved.

‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

Biden’s third proposal is to ban “assault weapons,” but it’s not clear what this even means. The Associated Press Stylebook, which influences the news media, now acknowledges that “assault weapons” conveys “little meaning.” AP admits the term is “highly politicized.” The oft-maligned AR-15 is, in fact, functionally identical to small-caliber semi-automatic hunting rifles. An “assault weapons” ban will mostly target guns that are designed to merely look militaristic in their aesthetics.

Lott points out how we had an assault weapon ban for a decade and it accomplished nothing at all. It had no impact on crime whatsoever and the one study I’m aware of that tried to claim it impacted mass shootings has largely been debunked.

What’s funny to me, though, is how often these three policy points are the solution to literally every problem. This is what is routinely pushed by both Biden and other anti-gunners as the answer to everything from mass shootings to suicides.

Yet let’s remember that 2023 started with two major mass shootings over a 48-hour span, both of them in California. It should be remembered that California has all these measures already on the books. They accomplished nothing.

In fact, we’ve seen numerous examples of states with red flag laws also experiencing mass shootings. A lot of people focus on Uvalde, in part because of the horror of so many slain children, but let’s not forget how Buffalo happened in spite of these laws all being on the books in New York, but especially the red flag law.

See, all of these measures are predicated on the issue being guns, which isn’t surprising.

How many times have we been told that the only common denominator in mass shootings is the gun? Well, yeah, if you choose a sample purely based on what you want the common denominator to be, that’s going to be the common denominator.

But mass killings happen all the time that don’t involve a firearm. Excluding those simply means tilting the machine so it favors you and your arguments. You don’t need a gun to kill.

In fact, we have a non-gun homicide rate higher than other developed nations total homicide rates.

So you’ll pardon me if I don’t trip over myself to do as Biden wants. Those measures have nothing to do with Uvalde and everything to do with Biden trying to destroy our right to keep and bear arms.