President Joe Biden is historically unpopular and his party is facing an electoral wipeout in seven months. And so, coming down the homestretch, Biden now wants to pick a fight over gun control, an issue that Democrats have been losing politically for years.
Biden is picking another confirmation fight over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His previous nominee, David Chipman, was a gun control nut whose nomination went down in flames. His next pick is Steve Dettelbach, who most recently was the Democratic nominee for attorney general in Ohio’s 2018 election. During the campaign, Dettelbach endorsed an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.
Meanwhile, Biden is also moving ahead with a proposal to regulate “ghost guns,” 3D printed gun parts, and gun-building kits further. Biden has embraced gun-grabbers such as former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke during his campaign and has repeatedly justified his gun control tendencies by saying that no amendment is absolute, using false claims repeatedly to try and prove his point.
Even PolitiFact has called out Joe Biden for this lie. https://t.co/fB23MatAEW pic.twitter.com/eF3yOg9mFv
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 11, 2022
You actually CAN, theoretically, yell “fire” in a crowded theater. Biden’s example, which has come to serve as proof you can hobble Constitutional rights, was listed as a POSSIBLE restriction on protected speech in a SCOTUS opinion but has never actually been litigated. https://t.co/caXktcl9k8
— Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) April 8, 2021
With Biden’s approval in free fall and Democrats on their way to massive losses in November, Biden wants to pick a fight over gun control. Millions of people became first-time gun owners during the pandemic, as uncertainty over the virus and the Democratic Party’s tolerance of riots led to a surge in homicides. Gun control was a losing issue for Democrats before the pandemic, and they have only lost ground since then: Last year, Gallup found that support for gun control had hit a seven-year low.
Biden is likely chasing a gun control fight because he thinks it can fire up the Democratic base at a time when Democratic enthusiasm is lagging far behind that of Republican voters. But it is Republicans, not Democrats, who benefit when gun control is brought to the forefront. Biden is once again handing Republicans a winning issue. At this point, the GOP is drowning in them.
Biden wants to build some sort of momentum moving forward with the Democratic Party’s base. It’s why he and his allies in the media have pretended that Republicans were launching vicious attacks against Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing when they asked her questions squarely related to her actions as a judge.
Biden and his team have proven to be terrible at politics when they don’t have former President Donald Trump to serve as their foil. With inflation raging and Biden’s incompetence on full display on the global stage, the last thing voters want to hear about is another liberal gun control push.
