With murder rates skyrocketing in major American cities, Joe Biden announced his "gun crime prevention strategy."  Because Democrats are opposed to punishments for crime, Biden was reduced to maligning the Second Amendment.  Thankfully, he lacks the authority to grab our guns, but he managed a few chilling statements.

Violent crime has dramatically escalated in Democrat-run states and cities, where Democrats have released violent prisoners; defunded, hamstrung, and demoralized the police; decreased or done away with bail; and elected Soros-funded prosecutors who refuse to prosecute potential Democrat voters.  As a Democrat, Biden could not promote stiffer prison penalties, meaningful bail, and aggressive prosecution.  However, he did concede that police make a difference:

[C]ities experiencing an increase in gun violence were able to use the American Rescue Plan dollars to hire police officers needed for community policing and to pay their overtime.

[snip]

And for folks at home, the American Rescue Plan, which is a once-in-a-generation investment to reduce violence in America, is available. I'm proud of it. It means more police officers, more nurses, more counselors, more social workers, more community violence interrupters to help resolve issues before they escalate into crimes.

The real point of Biden's speech was grabbing guns.  (If the filibuster holds, Biden lacks the political might to pass gun-grabbing laws.)  His problem is that the cities with the worst violent crime already have gun-grabbing laws.

Biden fell back on the old Chicago standby, saying that the illegal guns used to commit crimes in Democrat cities are smuggled in from states with lax gun laws:

With these strike forces, local and federal law enforcement and prosecutors are going to be able to better coordinate the prosecution of illegal gun trafficking across city and state lines, so illegal guns sold from the back door of a gun shop in Virginia don't end up at a murder scene in Baltimore. 

What Biden failed to explain is why those gun-supplying states don't also have out-of-control gun crime.

Biden also insisted that the only reason to have weapons and ammo is deer hunting:

Background checks for purchasing a firearm are important; a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — no one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds [Me: 100 rounds?  Someone's been getting into the Geritol] unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something; community policing and programs that keep neighborhoods safe and keep folks out of trouble.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with deer-hunting — and it's not the government's job to tell us what we need to defend ourselves, including against a tyrannical government.  And that leads us to Biden's incoherent, yet frightening attack on the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn't buy a cannon.

Those who say the blood of lib — "the blood of patriots," you know, and all the stuff about how we're going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What's happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.

The point is that there has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.

A few points:

The first national gun control law limiting the types of guns Americans could own was in 1934, a mere 143 years after the Second Amendment was ratified.

Following America's creation, the laws controlling who could own guns came from Democrats disarming Blacks.  Except for some renegade Southern Democrat branches of the NRA, the NRA pushed vigorously to overturn those laws.

Apparently, Thomas Jefferson was wrong when he said that "the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."  In Biden's America, if you face the government, you'd better come prepared, unless you're an unarmed civilian whom the Capitol Police welcome into the Capitol. Then, you're more dangerous than a nuclear bomb.

In 2018, Larry Correia practically predicted Biden's attitude (h/t: Glenn Reynolds):

I've had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn't apply, because "we kept the gloves on", whereas fighting America's gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy s---, I've got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns?

In the end, all Biden could do was say he'll go after law-violating gun dealers.  Still, his implied threat about turning the Army on Americans should make everyone wary.

Image: Biden talks about gun violence (cropped).  YouTube screen grab.

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