President Biden’s administration has passed numerous policies that have made people less safe, yet tries to get off the hook by claiming that there is just not enough gun control.
On May 25th, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the increase in the crime rate.
Her answer was that the lack of gun control is responsible for the increased crime rate.
Here is the transcript:
Reporter
A look back over the weekend and over the last year, this past weekend there were more than a dozen mass shootings across this country. 4,000 more people shot and killed by guns in 2020 compared to the year before. Is there a crime problem in this country?
Psaki
Well, I would say certainly there is a guns problem, and that’s something the President would say. And there are communities where local violence and community violence is an issue. And that’s one of the reasons that we have proposed and now are implementing funding for community violence prevention programs across the country. I will say that we don’t often highlight, and you just gave me the opportunity to, the fact that between mass shootings that get a lot of attention, that we lower the flags, there are hundreds, thousands of people who lose their lives. And that’s one of the reasons the President will continue to advocate for the Senate passing universal background checks, but also advocate for actions in states where we have seen the greatest level of activism over the past several years.
Reporter
Does COVID have anything to do with the increase in numbers that we’ve seen in the last year?
Psaki
In terms of local community violence? It’s an interesting question. I’d have to ask our team to check on that. I know as I started off this briefing, giving an update that we’ve seen statistics on domestic violence. And obviously we know that the loss of life at the hands of gun violence is often too often suicide and can be domestic violence. And we’ve seen statistics as, as it relates to the impact on mental health. But I’d have to check with experts on the assessment of that.
Is she right? Is there a “guns” problem? And is the lack of gun control the reason for the increase in crime? The short answer is: no.
If Psaki and the President were looking for the actual causes of crime, they might look to all of the cities across the country that have called for defunding the police amid riots and prisoner releases.
They might look at the involuntary COVID shutdown policies that increased the unemployment rate, creating desperation, isolation, and unchecked mental illness. That includes school-aged children who suffered significantly under these mandated shutdowns. And don’t forget the closure of gyms that could have helped people deal with their stressors.
They might look at federal and state policies that provided incentives for people to stay at home on lucrative unemployment, as opposed to finding work.
Or they might look at the overall increase in lawlessness, that has nothing to do with guns.
What is Psaki’s solution? More gun control, specifically the so-called universal background check. But that same “universal background check” the President wants the Senate to pass is precisely what Colorado passed in 2013. Since then, violent crime has surged while the national levels plummeted during that same timeframe.
Instead of looking at all of the problems created by government gun-control policies, and created by government-mandated lockdowns, the President’s administration just wants gun control. President Biden campaigned on gun control, has donors from the gun-control lobby who expect him to deliver on gun control, and his administration will use any current crisis to push for more gun control—even though they know it won’t make any of us safer.