Joe Biden disappoints again...

 ...and I don't mean because his oddly timed speech interrupted a show I was just starting to enjoy watching.

He seemed oddly morose at first--it would have been more odd if he hadn't shown any sympathy at all, but for a minute there I was wondering if he was going to get around to making a point--until I remembered that he had lost a son, himself; albeit under very different circumstances.

Then he tore into the gun lobby as if the only problem was that Congress and voters were simply afraid of gun manufacturers.

The same gun lobby that did not shoot up the school.

The same gun lobby that did not shoot his grandmother.

The same gun lobby that did not pass or fail the gun store background check.

The same gun lobby that did not exhibit many warning signs that went uncaught by red flag laws and federal NICS checks that state regulations cannot circumvent.

Meanwhile, Joe makes a number of incorrect statements; I no longer give him the benefit of the doubt, even in his upset state, in assuming he made an honest mistake.

Despite Joe's insistent repetition of the word, the shooter did not have any assault weapons.  He had a semiautomatic rifle that looks scary and may have had a pistol.  

The shooter carried in a bag full of ammunition, that at this time has been tentatively determined to have been in 30-round magazines, yet Joe insists that magazine capacity limits are important to legalize.  But if he had a whole bag full--that would probably be hundreds of rounds--what difference would it make if the contents of that bag was parceled into, say, ten 30-round clips or fifteen 20-round clips or thirty 10-round clips?  I don't think we're in the territory anymore where we can pretend it's worth talking about how small differences in inconvenience to a mass shooter might meaningfully affect the outcome.

And of course Joe holds little to no discussion about what drives someone like Tuesday's shooter to do something like that.  Instead he just wants to ban it.

Funny:  when we talk about banning abortion, the closest they come to agreeing with us is with rhetoric like "we need to make abortion unthinkable before we can make it illegal."  How nice:  take away all the things that make abortion seem like a worthwhile option before making it an unviable option directly.

I'm all for fixing things that make abortion appealing, separate from the legal considerations.  But why doesn't Joe and the rest of the gun control lobby feel the same way about that?  Why do they seem to think not only will gun violence go away but all other violence won't rise as violent people resort to other means?

I don't think they really fear another Bath, Michigan disaster even though that's what would happen.  I think the gun violence crusaders have a tactical opposition to guns but virtually none against violence.