Joe Biden surprised confused
President Joe Biden speaks during a "Cancer Moonshot," event in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

What does a President do when every major economic indicator is going in the wrong direction, the virus hasn’t been shut down, there’s talk of war in Europe and he’s being unfavorably compared to Jimmy Carter as his poll numbers crater?

Simple…he changes the subject.

Hence the chief of staff’s leak of news of the Justice Breyer retirement. Then came the non sequitur announcement of a cancer “moonshot.” Now His Muddledness will be in New York City today to launch a war on the “iron pipeline” of guns that allegedly flows into the city from all of those annoyingly free states to the south.

No, seriously.

Here’s the AP’s report of the administration’s latest effort at distraction . . .

The Biden administration is expanding a crackdown on untraceable guns and firearms trafficking along the East Coast “iron pipeline” and elsewhere as police departments across the nation fight surging gun violence that’s left a trail of bloodshed already this year.

President Joe Biden plans to announce the effort during a visit Thursday to New York City, where he’ll also showcase his plan to work with state and local law enforcement to get guns and repeat shooters off the streets. Biden also will stop at a school to meet with violence intervention leaders.

The visit comes as illegal guns flood the streets and gun violence claims scores of lives, including those of police officers. At the same time, Biden, a Democrat, is trying to dispel criticism from the right that he hasn’t been tough enough on crime.

But his modest announcements — expanding on initiatives already underway and offering suggestions for localities on how to spend federal dollars — demonstrate the limits to what he can do when there is no appetite in Congress to pass gun legislation. The strongest effort in recent years failed, even after 20 children and six adults were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Biden also is trying to navigate the complex politics of the moment: finding ways to combat crime while also pushing for greater accountability after killings of Black people by police. The two efforts do not have to be at odds, though they are often billed that way.

All this unfolds against the backdrop of recent polls showing that Americans are increasingly concerned about crime and that Republicans have an advantage over Democrats as the party that would do a better job dealing with it. The White House is pushing back against GOP efforts to paint Biden as soft.

“I think we all agree or should agree that violent crime is a serious problem,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week. “Our view is that instead of turning this into a political football, we need to be focused from the beginning of the president’s time in office on reducing crime and keeping our communities safe.”

Guns are at the center of the debate as the nation grapples with homicides that spiked nationally in 2020. At least seven 16-year-olds were killed in shootings last year in New York alone. And 32 officers have been shot on the job in 2022, five fatally. Two died in New York in two weeks and two campus officers were killed in Virginia on Tuesday.

Americans purchased a record number of firearms in 2020. Law enforcement officers recovered historically high numbers of firearms last year and are coming across more firearms stripped of serial numbers, making them impossible to trace.

Some early data suggests that the period between when a gun was purchased and used in a crime and recovered by police has shortened, compared with earlier years.

To combat this, the Biden administration is clamping down more on traders of “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them and that are often purchased without a background check.

The Justice Department is also working to stop the movement of guns north along the Interstate 95 corridor from Southern states with lax gun laws. Federal prosecutors will prioritize cases of those who sell or transfer guns used in violent crime and, if Biden’s budget is enacted, get specific agents dedicated to the effort.

Los Angeles and New York are among the cities with federal strike forces aimed at cracking down on gun trafficking. Federal agents are embedded in homicide units in police departments around the country, and the U.S. Marshals Service regularly conducts fugitive sweeps to arrest people with outstanding state or federal warrants.

biden approval rating graph rasmussen
Courtesy Rasmussen Reports

In May, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will host police executives from across the country to collaborate on solutions to gun violence. But the agency has been without a permanent leader since 2013, and Biden’s first nominee was rejected by Republicans and some moderate Democrats. There’s no sign of a new nominee.

Biden has proposed a large increase in dollars for local community policing programs, and if his social spending agenda were to pass, even more funds would be made available — but that effort is stalled in Congress, too.

He’s also encouraged cities to invest some of their COVID-19 relief money into policing and pushed alternative crime reduction steps such as increased community support and summer jobs for teenagers. He was expected to talk more about this effort on Thursday.

Some states and cities are already acting. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio proposed spending $250 million in federal funds to help first responders fight violent crime and recover from pandemic-related hardship. In Aurora, Colorado, where officers have left the force, those who remain will receive bonuses totaling $6 million.

Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said more money is important but fully staffed federal law enforcement agencies would also make a big difference.

“The efforts of criminal justice reform need to include the factors feeding into violent crime,” he said. “Our conversations with the White House have been that we recognize the need for criminal justice reform, the role of policing and accountability, but we also need to be similarly invested in bringing police the needed resources to address the increase in crime.”

Biden will be joined in New York by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain. Once an outspoken critic of his own department and someone who was beaten by police as a teenager, Adams portrayed himself during his campaign as someone who could bridge the divide between the New York Police Department and activists pushing for major change.

Adams’ tough-yet-middle-ground approach is one that Biden and other moderate Democrats have sought out, especially as they try to distance themselves from calls from progressives to shift money away from police departments and into social programs.

During a middle-of-the-night news conference following the shooting late Tuesday of an off-duty officer, Adams said he hoped federal and state lawmakers would give police the help they deserved.

“These officers, every day, put on their uniforms, pin that shield on their chest, put that bulletproof vest on and go back into the streets,” he said. “They still go back and do their jobs. Now it’s time for lawmakers to do their job.”

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

58 COMMENTS

  2. But yet, Sloppy Joe couldn’t seem to make it to either funeral of NY police officers.
    If that doesn’t tell you that he really doesn’t give a crap, nothing will.

    • “Sloppy Joe couldn’t seem to make it to either funeral of NY police officers.”

      I can find no record of Donald Trump attending any police officers’ funerals, before, during or after his presidency.

      “If that doesn’t tell you that he really doesn’t give a crap, nothing will.”

  3. quote—————Then came the non sequitur announcement of a cancer “moonshot.”———————quote

    While Trump actually increased cancer deaths by cancelling Obama’s pollution executive orders by letting U.S. Companies pollute the air and water with tons of deadly cancer causing carcinogens Biden put the laws right back into effect and is introducing a massive spending plan to eradicate cancer in the next 25 years. Of course the Morons on the Far Right being stingy , greedy and complete idiots scream they do not want to spend the money. I guess they plan on spending their money from the grave.

    The Justice Department is also working to stop the movement of guns north along the Interstate 95 corridor from Southern states with lax gun laws.

    Chicago and New York confiscated almost 700 Ghost guns last year that was directly attributed to the spike in crime in both cities.

    The Ghost gun problems may eventually lead to laws that will make it illegal for you to buy spare parts to fix your own guns without going through a lengthy process to get a permit to buy them or be required to have your weapon fixed at a licensed gunsmith.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/atf-spike-in-crime-driven-in-part-by-ghost-guns/vi-AATpDjN?ocid=U143DHP

    • blah blah blah
      Leftist drivel.
      If we all wear masks for 100 days, I bet we can defeat cancer, right?
      “Massive spending plan” is the only thing the left knows.
      They have spent literally trillions of dollars to eliminate poverty with the result that it is no different than it was decades ago.

      • Actually there is more “poverty” now.
        Keeping in mind that people living in “poverty” here would be considered rich in most of the world.

        Want to see real poverty, go to Calcutta, now known as Kolkata.

        • And when you add in the mental poverty of the many fools such as dacian, it is extremely higher.

      • AND destroyed the substantial negro urban middle class. Obviously for the demtard party that was a feature.

    • Hope you are being paid well by your masters, Benedict.

      Maybe 30 Bitcoins instead of 30 pieces of silver?

      What a Lefty shill.

      Or maybe you are just as clueless and stupid as you come across in your posts.

    • I’m sure all the criminals in NYC are home, busy putting together “ghost guns” from all the parts they ordered online from Brownell’s. You’re an idiot.

    • dacian the stupid,

      Your content-free word salads are getting even more unhinged. Have your doctor check your meds. Oh, and you’re stupid, uneducated, ignorant, ahistorical, and flat out wrong about damn near everything.

      That “education” you brag about? What was your degree in????

      There is a cable, somewhere, in desperate need of your assistance. Go tend to it.

      You are too stupid to insult.

        • avatar Geoff "A day without an apparently brain-damaged mentally-ill demented troll is like a day of warm sunshine" PR

          “Funny..I don’t see a post from Dackie Boy above…”

          Look harder.

          It began with “While Trump actually increased cancer deaths by…”

        • Reading is Fundamental. Look up at the top of the thread. If you still can’t find it, perhaps get your glasses prescription checked.

  5. New York, NY. That’s where the money is and that’s where the drugs go bringing with it violence in all its many forms. Same for Washington D.C. Add in Democrats strategy of being anti-police and soft on crime and there’s not much else that can happen. Short of isolating these areas there’s nothing that can realistically be done as it’s already gone too far.

    • And if the demand for illicit drugs produces a supply to meet that demand how in the hell do they believe that an equal demand for firearms to protect their illegal activities will not also be met?

      Have these people never heard of Prohibition and the massive increase in organized crime that went with it?

      Guaranteed that the flow of guns will INCREASE, not decrease, and it will be NYPD and federal officers that will being shot and city officials being bought off with bribes to look the other way.

      • Well done,Sir. You see through the smoke and have identified the REAL reason behind thi smoke and mirrors politcal niose emitting from the variuos pie holes of these politicians, all desparate to apper to DO something bout the situatioin THEY have created, and wish to perpetuate.

        An unregulated arket IS by definition a free market. There is no way anyone will reguate the market for these guns.. thus as long as the demand continues to rise, the supply WILL follow.

        There IS a sure nd viable solution to the “gun crime” “problem” they “wish” to cure. But that is precisely what they REFUSE to do. Instead, grandstanding, schmoozing to the cameras, etc. And more guns/more crime, just as they are wanting.

  6. I figured his big misdirection was plagiarizing the West Wing and promising to cure cancer. Maybe he’ll combine the two and demand serial numbers for all cancer cells.

  7. Reality check time: Nobody in MS is going to cooperate with Biden’s “new initiative”. We like our freedom, and our guns, a lot.

  8. The statement “Biden also is trying to navigate the complex politics of the moment:” made me think of Joey counting in his head…”Right foot…Left foot…Right foot…crap, I lost count…”

  9. Law enforcement officers recovered historically high numbers of firearms last year and are coming across more firearms stripped of serial numbers, making them impossible to trace.

    Two paragraphs later…

    To combat this, the Biden administration is clamping down more on traders of “ghost guns,” homemade firearms that lack serial numbers used to trace them and that are often purchased without a background check.

    They cannot even connect the dots.

    • Meanwhile the data we are trying to get that might be somewhat helpful is how many stolen guns were straw purchases by another name. Don’t expect to ever get accurate data on that process but the process is a bit too convenient for all involved to not be used to some degree.

    • Who cares about tracing the guns anyway if you let the criminals who use them go? Most of them will be stolen anyway, or straw purchases, so I don’t think this hubub is on restoring property to rightful owners.

      They just want a reason to block or end polymer80 and they don’t like it that law abiding gun owners might have guns they don’t know about.

    • I call BS. B&A to steal handguns. The “protected demographic” is going to mill the S/N off his new gats? WTH would he bother to do that. He doesn’t GAF about no ATF. HE’S A FELON. Stolen gun or gun with no S/N no Fed is going to hit him with a gun charge. Will be out on bail/no bail before his Snap card is refilled.

      • Doesn’t want the attention on his girlfriend/supplier over in VT/PA from the experience over here. Results may vary by region of course.

  10. So exactly WHAT is this article trying to say? That President BIDEN is wrong to try to do something about that ‘river og uns’ and the attempted siezure of GHOST GUNS and to try and stem the increase of GUN CRIME victims and Police l killed in the line of duty? What eactly has the risk of war in Europe, which I personally think is a tad over blown, got to do with it?

    But rest assured that the rest of the world IS looking at how the USA reacts to the situation in Ukraine.

    The West allowed itself to be bluffed by the Soviet Union for over 40 years as to it’s actual military strength by over a hundred percent Let’s hope it’s not a repeat peformance!

    At the moment it look’s as if Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, of all people and in spite of home grown problems of his own making, is taking the diplomatic lead You couldnot make it up!!

    • The article is trying to say that Impotent Joe is wrong at every step. You can’t sit just any senile fool in the Oval office, and expect good results. Creepy Sleepy Joe spent half a century sucking at the government teat, while plotting to destroy the country. Now he’s actually sitting in that seat, and he’s too damned senile to accomplish his goals. No worries though – he’ll be 25thd soon, and KamelCow will enact Sleepy’s wildest dreams.

    • Some black president made a correct observation… “Never underestimate Joe’s capability to F things up”

      I’d say that is one of the rare times I agree with Black Jesus.

    • wHAt “river of guns”? That is a pigment of his dark imagination, a shill he’s been given to spout. There IS no “river of guns”. NYC get all the guns they want… by many different ways. ChicAGO, Baltimore Philadalephia, as well. Didjya read about the gun Chicago kept identifying as being involved in a series of smoe fifty cries over three and a half years, but could never FIND the gun they KNEW was floating about. Util one day it WAS located, quite by accident. Intact serial number. It had been stolen out of a a gun store in another state four years before, but having the stuipd number did NOTHING to help them locate OR confiscate it. Once they found it, abandoned at a crime scene, and verified it was THE GUN they know had been so involved, they STILL had no idea who had had possession of it. The crimes perpetrated with it shifted through a dozen neighbourhods over tha ttime, but having the S/N would have done nothing.. WHERE WAS IT? No telling.. until they found it by accident. And no clue WHO had had possession of it over tose years, thoughthey were certain it was a seriies of criinals.

      This sotry is not an unusual one. Criminally linked guns wander about until soe pero is careless enough tog et cought with it in hand, but HE has no idea where it had been before HE got hold of it.
      The whole game is a myth. The ONY cre for this is to enofrce the laws,state and Federal, relating to the illegal USE of guns, not simple possession.

      Oh, and hows about allowing the CITiZENS of these cities to own and carry guns with them, because the cops are just crawling all over the place and SO effective at protcring the ittle poople.. right?

      Just readyestaerday about a state which has decided some years back to get harsh on felons found in unlawful possession of guns.. sending them to prison for twenty year stretches. They might return to their former life once releassed, but at least they;re locked up for that long. guess what? Violent cime of ALL sorts has been driopping rapidly in that state. And more of the citizens in that state are now carrying their own, for self-protection. And THEY dont commit crimes with their guns. THAT is the answer but dopeyJoey and the NY city/state goon eedjits can’t figure that out. Instead their DA’s refuse/fail to prosecute slam dunk cases.

      • I’d post a link to the carwash scene from COOL HAND LUKE, but the only sites that I can find it are porn sites. Ditto for the flogging scene from THE VIKING QUEEN.

  12. Thank God he’s going after repeat shooters instead of the one time shooters. Bet a lot of sighs of relief in the hood

  14. As I recall, 25-30years ago the Dept of “Justice” (way back when there was some occasional Justice at DOJ) and the NRA, and ATF had a pilot project in Virginia that actually, for a brief period, ENFORCED, the Fed firearms laws that were/are on the books. A felon in possession, illegal/straw purchase, illegal use and you WENT TO JAIL/PRISON. No lazy DA plea bargaining. Charge/prosecute/sentence/jail. It worked to quickly and substantially reduce violent crime.

    The PROBLEM for the demtards was Feds/state were sending, in mass, POS protected minority group scum (dem voters) up the river. Project abandoned.

    There is nothing new in politics.

  17. As anyone who EVER studied economics (this would exclude dacian the demented and our nameless, brainless troll) knows, where there is a demand, a market will develop to meet that demand – hello, “War on Drugs”. How’s that working out???

    There is a huge black market for firearms – stolen and resold, “street” guns (transferred from criminal to criminal), and, yes, dacian the stupid, a FEW homemade weapons. It requires some degree of skill, a few tools, and some careful work . . . which is why you are incapable. But most intelligent people can build a firearm pretty easily. “Universal background checks” will accomplish exactly f*** all to stem that black market. But Leftist/fascists are too stupid to understand things like markets, perverse incentives, supply and demand and unintended consequences. They live in fantasy world, where unicorn farts power electric cars, and declaring a federal program cures cancer.

    Letting law-abiding citizens who live in New York (or NJ, CA, HI, or any of the dozens of other blue-state hellholes) buy guns like normal humans in civilized states would go a long way to eliminating any black market “pipeline” that exists (to the extent that it is more than a Leftist fantasy). But there will ALWAYS be a black market for firearms, as long as there are people who (i) want firearms, and (ii) can’t buy them legally. Criminals work like that, you Leftist dipshits. That’s why they are called “criminals”.

    Go cure cancer (snort!); you’ve got one hell of a lot better chance of doing that than you do of eliminating the black market in firearms.

    But Leftists are too stupid to process reality.

    • “But Leftists are too stupid to process reality.”

      Please tell me how we are not in a full-blown Idiocracy when we have to deal with an entrenched bureaucracy that believes and promotes the ideas that….

      * Men can get pregnant
      * Women can get testicular cancer
      * Mothers are “birthing persons”

      • all mothers ARE birthing persons. But not all “birthing persons” are truly mothers.

        two point five out of three. passing grade.

  18. The increase in violence (note the lack of “gun” describint it) couldn’t be due to a porus border allowing huge amounts of both synthetic opioids and meth through and a “lock downs first” pandemic response that increases stress, decreases employment and prevents people who need treatment from being as able to get it all the while emptying the jails in the name of “social justice.”

    Nah, just absurd to think that could be the case at all.

  19. OK, apparently needed one more time. Listen up, Boys and Girls and politicians and government agency sleazeballs…….“Killing is a matter of will, not weapons.
    You cannot control the act itself
    by passing laws about the means employed.”
    The late Col Jeff Cooper, 1958, Handgun expert and founder of Gunsite Academy.
    Going on 63 years to grasp this insight.
    Yeah, I know. Reducing crime, gun deaths is not the true agenda…..merely excuses for Libturds’ anti-2A intent. It’s all about taking away America We The Little Peeps’ ability to resist the Lefturds’ true agenda.

    The new agenda for humanity requires that no one will have the capacity to fight back. It has been said: “Our Task of creating a Socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.” No other explanation is possible.

    History has repeatedly demonstrated that disarming good people in the name of making bad people harmless only eventually facilitates politicians shooting their own countrymen. History…learn from it or be doomed to relive it…..or die from it.

  20. OH, thank you Masters of TTAG for being so kind as to allow my comments to “….await your benevolent moderation.”

    Just exactly how is your moderation of our comments any different than Big Tech censorship??? Pray tell. The Cricket Hallelujah Chorus rises in
    crescendo.

  21. What “iron” are they talking about? Nobody has made guns out of iron in well over a century.

    Are they implying that there is a major problem with bangers shooting up bodegas with Colt Pattersons and Long Land Pattern muskets? Are there a lot of .41 Derringers turning up after muggings? Are thugs circumventing the NFA by sawing the barrels down on percussion muzzleloading shotguns? This I must see.

    If they don’t even know what the thing they are trying to prohibit is made of, they are unqualified to prohibit it.

    • Look pal, ‘plastic pipeline’ of illegal guns didn’t make it past the focus group, okay? I just read the words.

  22. “ Taking a page from Lori Lightfoot’s handbook.”
    RIIIIIGHT. And how is that working????

  23. Gun control proposals are by and large a marque of demogaugery or failure to have meaningful policy. I leave it to you to determine which in this case.

    • Andrew,

      Embrace the healing power of “and”. Senile Joe IS a demagogue (when he can actually complete a sentence), AND he has no meaningful policy. But he likes ice cream!!! And no more mean tweets!

  24. Truth is, the politicians are focusing on the wrong issue. Murder, robbery, assault, and most other violent crimes have been illegal for a long time. The hardware used is irrelevant. Doesn’t matter if someone kills 1 person with a flint tipped spear, or kills 10 people with a submachinegun. It always comes back to the person doing the crime. While there may be underlying issues, it still comes back to the person. The vast majority of people who own firearms have no desire and wouldn’t consider killing anyone who wasn’t a very clear and immediate threat to their life. Ask any cop, in almost any part of the country, most will tell you they deal with 10% of the local population 80% of the time concerning crime.

    Gun control has never and can never prevent or stop any crime or violent action. Nor has it ever prevented anyone who wants to get a firearm from doing so. You have to deal with the person or persons instead of the hardware.

  25. The district attorney is simply doing exactly what Libertarians have been demanding. He believes certain crimes are not crimes. And people should not be prosecuted for them.

    • Chris,

      Can you show us on the doll where the bad ‘libertarian’ hurt you??

      Look up the difference between “malum in se” and “malum prohibitum”. THAT’S what riles actual libertarians up. I ‘get it’ (for certain values of ‘get it’) that you don’t like certain schools of thought. Your right. But that brush you are trying to paint with is so broad you’re losing control of it.

      If we both believe in human liberty, perhaps that should be the starting point, rather than your almost obsessive focus on a few policy differences that don’t actually reflect mainstream libertarian thinking? Just sayin’, is all.

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