Joe Biden isn’t doing well. We’re not talking about his mental acuity…his poll numbers are in the toilet, sinking a lower with each passing month. And his policies are dragging Democrats down with him.
That’s a big problem with midterm elections coming up fast. So with his party facing what many predict will be electoral armageddon, the White House has taken a surprisingly muted approach to the opportunity presented by this past weekend’s shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, at least in terms of pushing their gun control agenda.
The superannuated Commander In Chief flew Air Force One to upstate New York this morning to stand before the cameras and say a few obligatory words about the supermarket massacre. But with a couple of prominent exceptions, he refrained from calling for Congress to pass a new “assault weapons” ban. He didn’t say, ‘NRA.’ There was no mention of deer in Kevlar vests or the much-reviled Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Biden’s been shouting about those bogie men for years now. He’s held two Rose Garden events during which he awkwardly yelled, whispered, and lied his way through pre-formatted talking points demonizing the Second Amendment, firearms, the companies who make them, and the increasing number of Americans who choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.
Instead, he declared in Buffalo that . . .
“The American experiment in democracy is in danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in danger this hour. Hate and fear being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.”
As the AP reports, Biden said . . .
“These actions we’ve seen, these hate-filled attacks, represent the views of a hateful minority,” Biden said.
“We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about a weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause,” he added. “We have to refuse live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.”
The closest he came to calling — yet again — for Congress to act on his wish for more gun control legislation was when he noted that, “We can keep assault weapons off of our streets. We did it before and violence went down.” That’s apparently a veiled reference to the Clinton “assault weapons” ban for which Biden loves to take credit. The fact that virtually everyone acknowledges that the Clinton AWB did nothing is apparently beside the point.
What the President didn’t do was to blame his political opponents for the shooting. At least not directly. Why? A couple of reasons seem likely.
First, anti-gunners and their media accomplices have done that in the past and it hasn’t worked for them. Bill Clinton blamed Rush Limbaugh for creating the atmosphere that led to the Oklahoma City bombing. Democrats tried to pin responsibility for the Gabby Giffords shooting on Sarah Palin for producing a pamphlet that printed targets on contested congressional districts. Those attempts to leverage the actions of previous insane killers for political gain didn’t help them.
Second, we’re now less than six months away from the November midterms. Asking an already unpopular Congress to vote on gun control legislation — which is certain to fail — won’t help their prospects at the polls and increases the risk of Democrats losing one or both houses this fall.
Besides, Biden doesn’t need to try to pin the blame on his political opponents for what a broken, radicalized wacko from upstate did. He’s got people like Chuck Schumer and members of the media lining up to do that for him.
Chuckie’s been pretty quiet about gun control since Saturday, sticking instead to the “RIGHT WING MEDIA MADE HIM KILL THOSE PEOPLE!” message.
In a letter to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Fox CEO Suzanne Scott, and Fox president Jay Wallace, Chuck Schumer says he urges Fox News to “immediately cease the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory…” pic.twitter.com/9FbUYrMtBi
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 17, 2022
That, however, isn’t satisfying members of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex who desperately want to take advantage of a high profile mass murder, just as they did after Sandy Hook and Parkland.
“I find it unconscionable that in the aftermath of a mass shooting in his home state, @SenSchumer has yet to lay out any plan for […] legislation that would make it harder for extremists to obtain the kind of weapons that killed 10 people in Buffalo.”https://t.co/JvM58ALMgq
— Guns Down America (@GunsDownAmerica) May 17, 2022
Oh dear.
Is the administration’s new argument: yes there will be more shootings, but we won’t fight for tougher gun laws because it’s just “very difficult”?
Is that the message to voters? We promised you tougher gun laws but it’s “very difficult,” you see.
Okay, got it. pic.twitter.com/fOrF93lOnS
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 17, 2022
Gun-grabbing zealots want to see Senate Democrats walk the plank vote for a gun control bill, whatever the fallout may be come the election.
Tucker Carlson isn’t any more responsible for what the Buffalo killer did than Bernie Sanders or Rachel Maddow were for James Hodgkinson’s attack on the Congressional baseball practice. But that won’t keep those on the left from attacking him and trying to tar anyone else on the right they can think of.
Meanwhile, Old Joe Biden — or more likely White House political strategists — have determined that this crisis will just have to go to waste, at least as far as pushing for more gun control laws is concerned. They apparently are holding out hope that they may still be able to hold onto control of the Senate after November. We shall see.
