Joe Biden was in San Diego a couple days ago, signing a historic AUKUS pact for mutual defense and technology-sharing with the prime ministers of Australia and the U.K., in a new effort to counter China.

Despite that, he moved a little further north to Monterey Park and announce this:

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Tuesday designed to increase background checks in a visit to a Los Angeles suburb that was the site of a mass shooting this year.

Biden issued the order shortly before a trip to Monterey Park, where 11 people were killed in January at a gathering for Lunar New Year celebrations.

"We all saw a day and festivity and light turned into a day of fear and darkness," Biden said Tuesday afternoon, when he read the names of the mass shooting victims.

"I’m here with you today to act," Biden said.

Which has an odd 'clang' given that the shooting happened months ago, and had no racial or other political kickers for him to capitalize on. It was just a miserable character acting out a personal grudge who went on a melee, Asian-on-Asian violence.

Given how much else is going on in the world Fox News's Charles Payne wondered why the oddly out-of-touch annoucement was made at all:

Breaking

President Biden will announce an Executive Order with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales.

This was in Biden's backpocket. These announcements always timed to change topics. (Not sure how criminals will find guns now)

— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) March 14, 2023

He's seems to be reading this right. The gun order, which will do nothing to stop mass shootings, was little more than a Biden bid to distract ... from something else.

What might that be? 

Well, a few hundred miles north of Los Angeles, a big bank went down, and his administration opted to bail all of the depositors out, even those with deposits well above $250,000 which is well beyond what the FDIC guarantees. Lot of Democrat donors in that bunch, wonder why they got that bailout when they would have known that if this were a bank out in the middle of, say, Ohio, they'd be left high and dry? Why the fast action to bail out the Silicon Valley Bank investors when the Ohio residents of East Palestine, Ohio had to wait weeks to hear anything from the feds and were originally told 'no'? And how, exactly, can a federal bailout cost "no taxpayer dollars," as he claimed? How many other banks are going to go bust based on this bailout factor, with their hands out?

Such are the questions he might have sought to distract from. Biden had no plans to visit the Silicon Valley even though he was in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, somewhere off the California coast, the Russians are getting very bold in their submarine activity, they turned up in these parts over the weekend. Any attention on that? Besides that, the Russians shot down a costly U.S. drone over the Black Sea, in international waters, the U.S. says. The Russians say otherwise. And off the coast of Estonia, Russian jet fighters made an "unprofessional" appearance there, too, forcing the U.K. and Germany to intercept their jets. Seems that on the foreign policy front, Biden doesn't want too much spotlight shone.

That's not even touching on the matter of China, whose military has been acting "unprofessionally" in the South China Sea, and which as emerged as the big powerbroker in the Middle East, mediating a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Who lost Saudi Arabia, Joe? Why's no one talking about the Abraham Accords anymore, why is the hot new thing in the region now appeasing 'Iran'? Biden would likely want to distract from that shambling failure, too.

Then there's inflation. Biden made a cursory crowing about the inflation numbers rising not as much as expected, slowing in certain areas. He left off that the food and energy sectors were still soaring in double digits. Perhaps he didn't want attention on that.

There's also Biden's family, with the House uncovering one instance after another of Biden family influence peddling and pocket lining even as Democrats call for someone else to run for president. No questions taken on that either.

So many issues to distract from. No wonder he tried to distract by bringing up useless gun control measures that won't do a thing to stop mass shootings. Nice try, Joe, nice spin.

Nobody's fooled by useless and irrelevant executive orders on gun control while huge failures swirl.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0