Byron York's Daily Memo: Biden’s nothingburger on crime
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BIDEN'S NOTHINGBURGER ON CRIME. President Joe Biden delivered much-anticipated remarks on crime Wednesday. The president, whose party has suffered politically from some Democrats' embrace of "defund the police" rhetoric, was under pressure to address soaring violent crime rates in some of the nation's largest -- and bluest -- cities. But he didn't have much to say.
The bottom line: Biden would target guns more than the criminals who use those guns.
Biden spoke after meeting with mayors, chiefs of police, and other officials from around the country. Their top priority: gun sellers. "First, we discussed cracking down...on rogue gun dealers," Biden said in remarks afterward. Biden mentioned dealers seven times in a brief speech -- after Attorney General Merrick Garland mentioned them nine times in prefatory remarks.
"We know that if there is a strict enforcement of background checks, then fewer guns get into the hands of criminals," Biden said. "And today, enough rogue gun dealers feel like they can get away with selling guns to people who aren't legally allowed to own them."
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Biden then went into a bizarre meditation on the Second Amendment -- more on that later -- before going back to the dealers. "These merchants of death are breaking the law for profit," he said. "Five percent of gun dealers...sold 90 percent of the guns found at crime scenes."
Biden included his gun dealer focus in the broader context of Democratic gun-control measures: "Background checks for purchasing a firearm are important," he said, "a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines -- no one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something."
But assault weapons, or AR-15-style weapons, or whatever you want to call them, are simply not the main source of the carnage in U.S. cities today. Look at this report from the Chicago Police Department. It is from 2017, but the basic character of crime in the city has not changed since then. "The vast majority of crime guns were handguns possessed by adults who were not the original purchaser of the firearm," the report said. "More than 90 percent of crime gun recoveries were handguns."
That's no surprise. A look at police reports every day would confirm that. In addition, note that the criminals were "not the original purchaser of the firearm." Sometimes that means so-called "straw purchases" are taking place, that is, a person who is qualified to purchase a gun buys it on behalf of a criminal. But the situation is much more complex than that. From the report:
A recent survey of adult offenders in Cook County Jail indicates that the vast majority of illegally used or possessed firearms are obtained through an offender's social network, family, or other personal connections. Only 60 percent of those firearms were actually purchased for cash, the remaining 40 percent were traded, shared, or temporarily loaned to the offender, sometimes due to the fact that the gun was previously used in a crime. It is difficult to track the chain of custody as guns travel through illegal markets...Crime guns often change hands multiple times, both legally and illegally, in many cases leaving law enforcement in a conundrum to determine the actual chain of custody leading up to a particular crime.
What is the lesson from that? Yes, it makes sense to prosecute straw purchasers of weapons that end up being used in crimes. But perhaps law enforcement and the justice system should devote the greatest amount of resources to going after the criminals themselves, keeping them in jail when they are convicted of serious offenses, and not letting people with long criminal records who have committed new crimes go free.
That leads to the dealing-with-criminals part of Biden's plan. The president talked about "community violence intervention." By that, he meant things like programs that "provide high-risk men with cognitive-behavioral -- cognitive behavioral therapy that helps them react to the impulses by slowing down rather than following through on the violence." He meant summer job programs that "help make sure young people pick up a paycheck instead of a pistol." And he meant "adult mentor and behavioral therapy" programs.
It was the same old Democratic same old. Push social-work programs for criminals and talk tough about guns. The president had nothing new, indeed nothing much at all, to offer on the problem of violent crime. There seems little to reason to hope his speech Wednesday will lead to any positive result. But it allows him, and other Democrats, to say that they are addressing the crime problem.
Finally, that bizarre meditation on the Second Amendment. Here is what the president said, from the White House transcript of his remarks:
And I might add: The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn't buy a cannon. Those who say the blood of lib -- "the blood of patriots," you know, and all the stuff about how we're going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What's happened is that there have never been -- if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is that there has always been the ability to limit -- rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.
There's a lot to consider there, which can be left to another time. But the takeaway from that is that the president does not seem to have thought through some of the history and fundamental issues involved in both the Second Amendment and crimes involving guns. Given his remarks Wednesday, that's not a surprise.
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