Biden’s Legacy on Gun Control Fleeting at Best

When a president is on his way out, people talk about his legacy. Some presidents themselves are very worried about it. After all, the last thing a president really wants is to leave office and have history remember them for accomplishing absolutely nothing.

For Joe Biden, at least part of his attempt at establishing a legacy has been in gun control efforts. Even if he actually believed they work, the truth of the matter is that he pushed for things that never really accomplished anything. He continued to call for assault weapon bans in the early hours after mass murders, only to find out that the killing involved a handgun. He was bound and determined to get gun control, even overreaching via executive order to get it.

But when it comes to his legacy on guns, he should enjoy it while it lasts.

“With the strength of this emboldened movement by our side, we have made historic progress to reduce gun violence over the past four years,” Biden said at the press conference, where he outlined what he called the administration’s “accomplishments.”

Among those, of course, was the creation of the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a farce of a federal office whose name is even based on a core fallacy that when criminals used lawfully produced, legally sold firearms for illegal means, what results is “gun violence,” not criminal violence. That allows Biden and other soft-on-crime Democrats to continue to coddle criminals while blaming the gun and lawful gun owners for the country’s criminal violence problems.

It’s likely—and we can certainly all hope—that the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention isn’t long for this world with President Donald Trump moving back into the White House. Many observers speculate that one of President Trump’s first actions might be to immediately close the office.

Other  Biden “accomplishments,” namely the multiple executive orders he put into place concerning everything from redefining what was a “firearm” to changing the definition of who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, are also likely on the way out soon. Not only have several of those actions already been found to be unconstitutional, but President Trump can undo them just as fast as Biden executed them.

Exactly.

The one thing that’s not so easy to undo is the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, or BSCA. That was passed by Congress, after all, so it’ll have to be undone by Congress. That would be the Congress coming in that is majority Republican in both the House and the Senate. The one that isn’t overly fond of gun control as it is.

Now, I don’t think repealing the BSCA is a slam dunk. After all, the filibuster is still a thing, and Democrats are going to use it. They have a moral objection to the filibuster only when Republicans use it. They’re not opposed to using it themselves. Because of that, expect them to try and block any effort to repeal BSCA.

It can still be done, but probably by doing something I actually hate, which is including provisions repealing it in with other bills that have nothing at all to do with guns. It needs to be something Democrats can’t really block without shooting themselves in the foot or at least looking like they are, such as how Democrats tried to frame the potential shutdown as Republicans not voting for military pay.

But that’s just a me thing. I’d really rather they didn’t take that approach, horsetrading for the votes instead, but I’m not sure that’s remotely possible.

Still, a lot of what happened with the BSCA is empowering the executive branch to do things, and there’s little chance of Trump doing them.

What that means is that while Biden may hope for a gun control legacy, he shouldn’t hold his breath.

Not that he’ll be aware of his legacy one way or another.