Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden launched into the New Year by urging voters to make 2020 the year for gun control.

Biden did this while re-tweeting an Associated Press story which showed an elevated number of mass killings in the U.S. in 2019.

Ironically, the list was not simply about firearm-related killings, it included killings carried out with axes, knives, and other weapons too.

Moreover, the AP story showed California–the state with more gun control than any other–also had the most “mass slayings” of any state in 2019.

But Biden re-tweeted the story anyway, and used it to call for gun control:

2019 was a year of record violence — it will be a moral failure if we allow 2020 to be the same. We have to elect leaders with the courage to take on the @NRA and pass common-sense gun safety reform. We have to end this epidemic. https://t.co/Qhv4SVzc9X — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 31, 2019

On December 29, 2019, armed congregants at West Freeway Church of Christ, White Settlement, Texas, responded to an armed attacker. One congregant shot and killed the perpetrator just seconds after the attack began.

Just months earlier, Biden had criticized Texas’ law allowing concealed carriers to be armed in church for self-defense. He described the law as “absolutely irrational.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.