Staunch gun control advocate and failed presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg spent $100 million dollars in support for Biden just in Florida. Bloomberg puts another $60 million a year into his own anti-gun group, “Everytown For Gun Safety” whose agenda mirrors that of President Biden. That isn’t coincidental. But these extreme gun control measures presented as “common sense” have little chance of passing. The legislative trend in the U.S., on the state level, has been for less gun control, not more, and there is nothing to prevent states like New York, California, and Illinois from enacting these draconian measures on their own if they think they would survive Constitutional scrutiny, which they most likely would not.
President Biden pretending to make good on promises he can’t really keep is also demonstrated by the demand that National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks be done on every firearm purchase. The problems with the NICS system are well known and go back decades. The system requires state courts, local sheriffs, the military branches, and hospitals to all file reports of serious crimes and mental problems that would prohibit the purchase of a firearm at the points of sale.
The problem is that they don’t do so on a massive scale.
It is estimated that as many as five million serious crimes, like violent felonies, and court adjudicated findings of mental incompetence are not in the NICS system. Millions of people who should not have firearms will just sail right through the background checks President Biden wants. President Biden has been in politics for nearly 50 years, he knows this. What is conspicuously missing from his “common sense” gun control proposals is making the NICS airtight. If you really wanted to keep guns out of the wrong hands, you would do that first, because many of these mass shootings are the result of the NICS system missing a dangerous person.
In 2014, Eduardo Sencion walked into an IHOP in California, gunned down four people, and wounded seven others. Three of the dead were National Guardsmen. Sencion, who was 32 at the time, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 18. He had once been picked up by the police and involuntarily committed to a mental institution. None of that was reported to NICS because a conflicting federal law did not consider an involuntary committal grounds for a report to the system.
Mental health records that would have flagged Seung-Hui Cho prior to his gun purchase might have saved 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2017.
Also in 2017, Devin Patrick Kelley would have been barred from buying a firearm if his domestic violence conviction while in the Air Force had been reported to the NICS system. Instead, 26 people were massacred by him in a church in Sutherland Springs Texas.
In reference to the 2018 Parkland Highschool Shooting that President Biden sought to memorialize in his statement announcing his gun control plans, the majority of the blame lies with the state for not acting on repeated warnings.
Nikolas Jacob Cruz had near-constant behavior issues since middle school. These had manifested as violent threats against other students and faculty. He was moved between six schools in the three years prior to the shooting. Psychiatrists had recommended involuntary commitment for Cruz with no success. The Florida Department of Children and Families investigated Cruz for self-mutilation and statements about wanting to purchase guns. Nothing happened. Between 2008 and 2017, the Broward County Sheriff’s Department had handled some 45 calls to the Cruz home for domestic disturbances. Some calls had even included fears that Cruz was going to shoot up a school. Again nothing happened. Finally, the FBI received a tip two days before the shooting about Cruz’s possible intentions to act. The FBI Tip Line should have forwarded it to the Miami Field Office for investigation. It failed to.
In the above case, time and again the government, from school boards, to state health facilities, to state and federal law enforcement agencies failed to act to protect the public. And in that failure, Cruz obtained firearms killed 17 children and wounded another 17. Since the horrible shooting, not a single agency has admitted to any failure on its part. In fact, both the School Board and Sheriff’s Office stand accused of trying to cover up their incompetence and non-action.
As of 2021, the 17 murder charges against Cruz from 2018 are still tied up in the court system.
It seems a bit tone-deaf for the current president to think that the solution for failures by the state to protect innocent lives lies in punishing those who go about their lives peaceably and lawfully.
Banning the most popular class of firearms in the country, trying to bankrupt firearms makers, and demanding that a misfiring NICS system be used on all purchases may be Biden trying to pay off the elements from the Left that put him in office.
But it’s anything but common sense.
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