By Cody J. Wisniewski
“Speech is worth one coin, but silence is worth two,” states the Talmud, a central text of Jewish tradition. Perhaps Joe Biden should have favored us with his silence regarding the recent hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue.
Instead, he offered some remarks that didn’t make much sense.
Predictably, the president pushed more gun control, while also admitting this wouldn’t have stopped the synagogue hostage-taker. He made no clear attempt to reconcile this contradiction.
From there, Biden went on to speak disconnectedly about too many guns being purchased in recent times. He assured a journalist that he was working to solve this supposed problem—not crime or terrorism, but “so many guns” being sold.
Biden’s gun control rant came during a short press conference about the events of January 15 when British citizen Malik Faisal Akram took a Rabbi and three congregants hostage at Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. The hostages survived the ordeal unharmed, while Akram was killed after a 10-hour standoff.
Taking questions about the incident, Biden said Akram had apparently purchased a gun “on the street.”
The president was then asked whether the terror incident would have “ramifications for the push to ensure that guns are not available”—an appalling question from the press, given the natural right of self-defense that the Second Amendment is meant to protect.
It would have been good to hear the president push back and clarify that America must never become a country in which “guns are not available.” Instead, here’s how his response began, according to the official White House transcript: “Well, no—well, it does but it also doesn’t,” he said. “The guns are—we should be . . .” At a loss for words, the president landed on a familiar trope: “The idea of background checks are critical.”
But even President Biden could see the contradiction with what he had said only moments ago. Akram had purchased his gun “on the street,” outside any system of background checks.
Biden admitted as much. “But you can’t stop something like this if someone is on the street buying something from somebody else on the street,” he acknowledged. The policies he had just called “critical” would have made no difference.
Stuck, the president seemed to go in a different direction: “Except that there’s too — there’s so many guns that have been sold of late; it’s just ridiculous.”
Biden is correct that Americans have been buying more guns; although that’s hardly ridiculous, given the crime and violence in America’s cities. Indeed, millions of Americans bought a gun for the first time in 2020, a trend that continued in 2021. The increase in gun ownership is clearly related to the nationwide riots of 2020, and continuing record rates of violent crime in 2021.
Biden never even bothered to connect his rambling complaint about “so many guns” being sold back to the synagogue attack. But it’s worth noting that Judaism itself has a robust tradition of acknowledging self-defense rights.
Armed guards, and even armed congregations, are becoming increasingly more common in synagogues throughout the country. What choice do Jews have, with anti-Semitism on the rise and politicians, including Biden himself, slow to acknowledge it. Jews must count on their own measures to protect themselves from incidents of hate.
Meanwhile, Biden — still on the “so many guns” theme — concluded his answer to the press by claiming this alleged oversupply is “because of the failure of us to focus as hard as we should and as consistent as we should on gun purchases, gun sales, ghost guns, and a whole range of things that I’m trying to do.”
Of course, none of this would have stopped Akram from buying a gun on the street, any more than “background checks” would have. But by this point, Biden seemed rather off-track from discussing the hostage-taking by the terrorist at the synagogue. Instead, he was content to complain about Americans buying too many guns, while assuring a journalist he means to do “a whole range of things” about that.
While Biden’s statements were misguided and wrong, they at least offered remarkable insight into the gun control mindset: whatever the problem, the answer is always to demonize guns and to disarm the People, however ineffective they are at stopping criminals. Only now, gun control advocates no longer bother to hold back from saying it out loud.
Cody J. Wisniewski (@TheWizardofLawz) is the Director of Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms. He primarily focuses on Second Amendment issues but is happy so long as he is reminding the government of its enumerated powers and constitutional restrictions.
To learn more about the Center to Keep and Bear Arms’ work and support their fight for your natural right to self-defense—from both man and tyranny—visit www.mslegal.org/2A and donate today!
Gun control is a single, giant exercise in the logical fallacy of begging the question. No need to even bother asking any of those pesky questions. The answer is already assumed, and we all know what it is.
Rambling incoherent jabberings from a senile dried out husk of a person.
Our country has become a punchline.
Obiden was an useless incompetent buffoon LONG before he ran for President/VP
Biden’s comments makes me wonder how long before Slow Joe appoints some anti gun POS to position of “Gun Sales Czar
Not sure which scares me more: the remnants of Alzheimer ridden boomers with one foot in the grave still running the world or the mentally ill narcissist helicopter children coming in to take their places.
Watching old Crampy sliding ever deeper into senescence is way more entertaining than any Hollyweird movie. It’s almost as entertaining as watching Michael Rapaport being skulled by a snowball.
Almost.
Let’s see what ‘Attorney’ Lamp has to say about this important matter lol. I’m sorry but that ‘revelation’ is going to have me laughing the entire weekend.
Hi, nameless, brainless troll! Get your GED, yet???
Why would you want to have an attorney opine as to the senescense of our alleged “President”??? 25th Amendment, perhaps??? Or is that too deep in the weeds for a brainless asshat such as yourself? Revelation for you, brainless one – senile dementia is a MEDICAL diagnosis, not a legal conclusion – but you’re too stupid to know that, aren’t you??
The cable awaits. You’re too stupid to insult.
Good Satire:
https://americasbestpics.com/picture/us-bobsled-team-renames-their-sled-biden-because-nothing-has-IeuyZRMI9
That right there is funny, thanks for the link.
HERE IS WHAT THE T TAG PROPAGANDA RANT DID NOT TELL YOU ABOUT BIDENS SPEECH.
NOTICE NO. 4 STATEMENT. THE FAR RIGHT SCREAM PRISON FOR PEOPLE BUT THEN THINK NOTHING OF THROWING THEM OUT ON THE STREET AFTER THEIR SENTENCE IS OVER WITH ONLY $25.00 IN THEIR POCKET, NO PLACE TO LIVE, AND NO CHANCE TO GET A JOB.
First, we’re cracking down on the flow of firearms used to commit violence. That means going after rogue gun dealers who illegally sell to criminals. We’re also sending additional prosecutorial resources to shut down the so-called “iron pipeline” that brings guns from other states into New York City. Gov. Kathy Hochul has created an interstate, interagency task force to stem the flow of illegal guns. Efforts like this will make a big difference.
We’re also going after people who use “ghost guns” to commit crimes. These are the guns that can be assembled from a kit but can’t be traced when they’re used in a crime because they don’t have serial numbers. So we’re launching an intensified national ghost guns enforcement initiative to deter criminals from using those weapons to cover their tracks. If someone commits a crime with a ghost gun, not only will state and local prosecutors come after them, they should expect federal charges and prosecution.
Second, we’re funding smart law enforcement and gun crime prevention efforts. New York City has identified a few hundred individuals in a city of 8.8 million who are repeatedly involved in gun violence. Every weekday, the city brings together federal, state and local law enforcement sharing intelligence so that we can get these shooters off the street. I visited a meeting of this “Gun Violence Strategic Partnership” during my trip and saw how effective it is when everyone is working together against gun violence. The U.S. Department of Justice is going to help more cities adopt the same model.
Third, we’re investing in community violence intervention and prevention strategies that work, like violence interrupters, summer and after-school programs for teens, jobs for young adults (as the saying goes, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”), school counselors and nurses, and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Fourth, when someone finishes their time in prison, we can’t just hand them $25 and a bus ticket. We need to ensure they can access job training, stable housing and a second chance at a better life.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/joe-biden-enough-heres-our-plan-to-solve-gun-violence/ar-AATskvd?li=BBnb7Kz
WHO is it in NYC that the DA is sending to prison???
Yes, all that. But Biden concludes [in the MSN article] with “Congress also needs to do its part. Pass universal background checks. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Close loopholes to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and repeal the liability shield for gun manufacturers, because there’s no reason that they should be the only industry in America that’s exempt from being sued.” There’s more to Biden’s agenda than you’re reporting, too.
Shorter dacian the stupid: “Biden is SO a good President! Not like that nasty old poopy-head Trump!! Just because he’s a drooling, senile nincompoop, doesn’t mean he’s not a good President. He agrees with me, so he’s smart!! Argle bargle barr!!!!!”
There, shortened your incoherent rant, made it semi-intelligible, and did no violence to the “point” you were fumbling at. You’re welcome, nitiwit.
The cable awaits. You are too stupid to insult.
Rights are the obligations of the state to the citizen under the social contract. Felons are criminals whose acts were so heinous that they were stripped of citizenship. They are stateless persons… but you, and the rest of the Left, have spent the last 80+ years making it very clear that you believe that the state, to which we pay taxes, whose authority we obey, has greater obligations to felons than to us. This is despite the fact that we are party to the social contract and felons are not. You also seem to be very surprised and offended that people are reading that billboard you constructed.
No, I have a better idea about criminal justice policy.
The nine Common Law Felonies are murder, robbery, manslaughter, rape, sodomy, larceny, arson, mayhem, and burglary. They should all get the death penalty automatically, to be carried out in view of the public at high noon the day after conviction. Add possession of narcotics to that list, whether for personal use or resale. Add an automatic death penalty for the third felony conviction. Those violent felons whose crimes do not fall into these categories and who are not immediately executed should automatically be sterilized and lobotomized immediately upon conviction, and spend their sentences in cells lacking cable television, Internet access, and exercise equipment. Any medical treatment that they may require while imprisoned is to be carried out by physicians working as volunteers and no payment of public funds is to be disbursed for this purpose. If no physician is willing to volunteer, the state has no authority to compel one to treat a felon, because the state has no obligation to felons. Felons have no rights by definition, only privileges that can be revoked by state authorities with or without warning for whatever reason seems sufficient at the time.
No felon is to possess a weapon of any kind, on penalty of death. No felon is to associate with other felons, possess mind-altering substances of any kind, vote, hold public office or public employment, receive public assistance, or have standing to sue in a US courtroom. Felons who are not US nationals by birth are to be returned immediately to their nations of origin upon completion of their sentences, and are not to reenter the US, on penalty of death. Felons may receive charity, if a charitable organization can be found that is willing to associate itself with them, but this is grace, this is not a right.
The emanations and penumbras of the 1st Amendment clearly imply a Constitutional right to freedom of association, such that the state has no legitimate authority to compel citizens to associate with such undesirables, either by hiring them or by permitting them to live in their communities.
This is more or less how the matter was handled in the US prior to the Second World War. Note that the violent crime rate in the US was one murder per hundred thousand per year in 1900, but six per hundred thousand per year in 2000. It seems to have worked pretty well, insofar as we were both much freer and much safer a hundred years ago than we are today. Since the 1960s we have made little tin gods of “equality” and “civil rights” and we sacrifice innocents to them a million at a time. When will it be enough?
There’s nothing futile about it. They hate us and want to rub our noses in the fact that they can do whatever they want and public policy has been disconnected from the results of elections. These calculated expressions of contempt for the Constitution, for our traditions, for the nation’s founding stock, also whip the far-Left base into a frenzy of enthusiasm, and after a year of humiliation, failure, and preposterous incompetence on display, the Democrats really need some red meat they can throw to the True Believers.
Meanwhile the GOP Establishment will point at what China Joe and his handlers are doing and shriek for more donations from the rubes. If it passes, even if the GOP is allowed to win the “elections,” even if the peasantry are allowed to believe that people who answer to us hold all three branches of government, they won’t repeal a single line of it. Good ol’ Mitch McConnell and good ol’ ¡Yeb! will smirk and shake their heads and say “Nope, can’t do it, can’t do a thing for ya, our hands are tied, but donate some more money to my campaign, mmkay?”
Of course Joe is frustrated, he’s an impotent old pedophile that can’t act on his deviant impulses.
Sounds * exactly * like Geoff the (fully vaxxed and boosted) Florida Pervert.
Nameless, brainless troll,
You always thought you were a wit – and you’re half right.
The cable awaits. You are too stupid to insult.
These actions accurately represent the ideology of the Democratic Party, it is not drastic and does not solve the root of the basketbros problem.
We need stricter gun laws. Violence increased and many victims died for no reason.
It’s quite aesthetically pleasing to me happy wheels. Please let me know how I may be notified whenever a new post is made.
Even if felons are not parties to the social compact mini crossword, this nonetheless happens. Additionally, you appear to be shocked and angry that anyone is reading the billboard you made.
Comments are closed.