By: Teresa Mull

It’s a violent world out there, and getting worse.

Consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak, societal unrest, the “Defund the Police” movement, and other factors have all led to a surge in crime in the United States.

Biden’s solution? “Reform the police” and “crack down on rogue gun dealers violating our laws.” Oh, and banning 9mm handguns, too, for good measure.

The problem is, of course, most criminals don’t get their guns from gun dealers, and the laws we have in place don’t do anything to stop criminals who, by definition, don’t obey them. The other problem is that most crime doesn’t involve a gun.

The American public knows these obvious facts, which is why most of us, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, disapprove of how the Biden administration is handling, or mishandling, gun violence.

According to the poll (which you can view here), “Overall, slightly more than a third of Americans approve of the way the president is handling crime (39%), immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (37%), and gun violence (37%).”

The Biden-Harris Administration’s “comprehensive strategy to combat gun violence and other violent crime” includes, from the White House website:

– Establishing zero tolerance for rogue gun dealers that willfully violate the law.

– Maximizing the efficacy of ATF resources to crack down on rogue gun dealers violating our laws.

– Equipping states that have their own gun dealer licensing systems with data from ATF inspections.

– Launching multijurisdictional firearms trafficking strike forces.

– Providing the public with additional data to promote transparency and accountability in enforcement of federally licensed firearms dealer policies.

– Stemming the proliferation of “ghost guns” and modified firearms.

In essence, Biden intends to focus on gun dealers who do bad stuff, while Fox News reports:

“Statistics show that those individuals committing ‘mass killings’ during ‘active shooter’ events do so utilizing weapons that have been obtained legally by themselves or a friend or family member,” observed Charles Marino, CEO of Sentinel Security Solutions. “Statistics show that those individuals committing what is known as ‘street crimes’ are typically doing so by utilizing weapons that have been initially stolen and may have further traded hands in the black market.”

What’s more, researcher John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has noted recently that, “…[C]ritics warn that this ‘guns first’ approach ignores a basic fact – about 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.”

Lott points out in a recent op-ed:

Although firearms were used in about 74% of homicides in 2019, they comprise less than 9% of violent crimes in America.

The vast majority of violent offenses – including robberies, rapes and other sex crimes – almost always involve other weapons or no weapons at all.

Civilian disarmament has always been the left’s goal, but it appears the tides are turning against these measures, as more Americans wake up the reality of violent crime, seek to defend themselves the best way they know how, and reject the lies the left is telling us.

“Anti-gunners always think that if they curb law-abiding citizens ability to freely exercising their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves, then crime will drop,” Chris Stone, Communications Director for the National Association for Gun Rights, told GPM. “How’s that worked out in New York City, Chicago, and in California?

“Gun control is a miserable failure – and Joe Biden is just trotting out the same old, lame, tired excuses to disarm the American public,” Stone continued. “If Biden really cared about curbing crime in America, he’d start repealing all the gun control laws which hamper our ability to stop thugs and criminals in their tracks.”

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.