In a video message from the White House, President Biden mourned yesterday with the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, nine years ago. He assumed the patina of a sincere close friend familiar with their suffering, claiming that it was “one of the saddest days” during his time as vice president under Barack Obama.
He then turned the memorial service directed to those families into political theater directed to anyone else who might be watching: “We owe all of these families more than our prayers. We owe them action.”
Biden sounded like President Obama when Obama made a televised statement following the shooting back in December 2012. Said Obama at the time, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.” He said he would “use whatever power this office holds” to prevent future such tragedies.
All of which is hyperbole, tiresome repetitions of remedies that have nothing to do with preventing future Adam Lanzas from committing similar mayhem. But those “remedies” have everything to do with continuing the government’s war against private ownership of firearms by American citizens.
Lanza, it will be remembered, had no criminal record. His mother was a law-abiding citizen and owner of a number of firearms which she had purchased legally over time. Lanza’s first crime was theft. He stole a few of his mother’s firearms and used them first to murder his mother and then kill a total of 28 people, including himself.
The report from Connecticut’s attorney for the District of Danbury, where Sandy Hook Elementary School is located, concluded that the firearms and ammunition that Lanza used were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza and then stolen by her son Adam.
Wrote AWR Hawkins, a freelance writer with a Ph.D. in U.S. military history:
All of the guns were lawfully purchased by Lanza’s mother as was all the ammunition. Lanza then bypassed all gun control [laws] by stealing the firearms before using them to carry out his heinous crimes.
Because the guns were stolen [gun control laws did] nothing to prevent the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary.
What Biden’s mourning did was reveal once again that the issue wasn’t preventing similar atrocities in the future but continuing the long war on private gun ownership in the United States.
So, the chipping away at the Second Amendment continues. In his message, Biden said he already had “curbed the proliferation of ghost guns, crack[ed] down on rogue gun dealers, and promot[ed] safe storage [rules for firearms].”
And, if history is any guide, Biden is likely to unleash a barrage of illegal executive orders that have nothing to do with preventing future tragedies but everything to do with continuing the war on guns.
Following the shooting in 2012, President Obama issued 23 executive orders that were irrelevant to the shooting, including:
- Directing his Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure that dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks;
- Proposing a rule giving law enforcement authorities the power to run background checks on an individual before returning a seized gun;
- Publishing instructions from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers;
- Directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research [the causes of] gun violence; and
- Directing the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies.
One can see at once how the war is being conducted. Under the cover of the Sandy Hook shooting, that war will be ramped up once again, this time by the Biden administration, not in any attempt to prevent another Sandy Hook shooting, but to continue the steady chipping away at and erosion of precious rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
