Let’s take a look at how well Joe Biden is doing with his gun safety agenda.
We call this gun safety, people, because “gun control” makes a lot of politicians nervous. And really, what the heck? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that eliminating the sale of semiautomatic rifles would make the country more … gun safe.
Banning assault weapons was on Biden’s to-do list, along with universal background checks and a stronger, more forward-looking Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under the leadership of David Chipman.
Well, here we are, less than a year into the administration, and Chipman’s nomination is kaput. Biden hasn’t yet come up with a new name. This is not all that unusual, since congressional gun politics has limited the A.T.F. to only one actual confirmed chief in the last 15 years.
If anyone ever does get to officially head the bureau, perhaps he or she could do something about its weapons-tracing system, which is basically a vast mountain of paperwork, thousands of boxes high. Congress has made it illegal to put the records into a searchable computer database — a change that would make the whole process either efficient or a nefarious “gun registry,” depending on who you’re talking to.
Gail Collins in Why Are We Still Going Great Guns?