On Sunday, former Vice President Joe Biden spiked a pickaxe into the stone in his continued strike at 2020 glory by publishing a New York Times op-ed with virtually no substance.

The title:

“Banning Assault Weapons Works – That’s Why, as President, I Will Push to Ban Them Again”

Here’s a piece:

We have to get these weapons of war off our streets. Nearly 70 percent of the American public support a ban on assault weapons — including 54 percent of Republicans. When you have that kind of broad public support for legislation that will make their families safer, and it still can’t get through the Senate — the problem is with weak-willed leaders who care more about their campaign coffers than children in coffins.

And here’s why it’s dumb: Most violent crimes are committed with handguns. Most gun deaths are caused by handguns.

Not rifles.

If stopping violent death from firearms was the goal, and if banning hollow projectile-launching tubes was the appropriate method, the correct move would be to go after the little guys.

But if the mission was, instead, to do whatever would sound the most sensational and incendiary, that would have very little effect on crime — if the idea was to do something loud and lame…the obvious grandiose grab would be “weapons of war.”

The distinction makes no sense, but it sounds alarming. What is a weapon of war?

Soldiers in war have handguns. And knives.

The AR-15 is America’s most popular hunting rifle.

Consider data from Mother Jones, as relayed by The Daily Wire:

50% of the 114 mass shootings committed in the United States from 1982 – 2019 were committed using only handguns.

12.2% of the 114 mass shootings committed in the United States from 1982 – 2019 were committed using only rifles.

24.5% of the 114 mass shootings committed in the United States from 1982 – 2019 were committed using a mix of handguns and rifles together (some shotguns, and other firearms as well).

Of the 934 deaths in mass shootings from 1982 – 2019, 385 (41.2%) happened in shootings in which handguns were the only firearms used.

Of the 934 deaths in mass shootings from 1982 – 2019, 182 (19.4%) happened in shootings in which rifles were the only firearms used.

Of the 934 deaths in mass shootings from 1982 – 2019, 367 (38.3%) happened in shootings in which a mix of firearms were used.

And that’s mass shootings, which are far more rare than smaller-victim-group incidents. According to the FBI, from 2013 – 2017, 66.2% of all gun murders in the U.S. were committed with handguns. Only 3.25% employed rifles.

If Joe intends to appeal to the ignorant and emotional — and that isn’t necessarily a poor political strategy — he should continue along his current path.

Otherwise, he may wanna look into doing things that address the problems of the country, instead of offering up pointless political posturing — which is a problem all its own.

-ALEX

See 3 more pieces from me:

STUPIDEST WORDS EVER SPOKEN: CNN Hails ‘One Of The Great Reporting Jobs In History’ Covering Collusion

In Light Of The New Zealand Islamic Mosques Massacre, A National Book Chain Bans Jordan Peterson

Woman’s Rapists Exonerated Due To 3 Judges’ Ruling That She Was Too Ugly To Have Been Raped

Find all my RedState work here.

And please follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook.

Thank you for reading! Please sound off in the Comments section below.

If you have an iPhone and want to comment, select the box with the upward arrow at the bottom of your screen; swipe left and choose “Request Desktop Site.” If it fails to automatically refresh, manually reload the page. Scroll down to the red horizontal bar that says “Show Comments.”