Biden-Harris Administration (Still) Using Gang Violence to Limit Law Abiding Citizens’ Gun Rights

Four heavily armed gangsters formed a skirmish line of sorts outside of a nightclub in Birmingham, Alabama’s popular entertainment district known as Five Points South on Saturday night around 11 p.m. Then they sprayed a large crowd with their illegally converted fully automatic 9mm handguns. Four people were killed and 17 were wounded – at least four critically. Police later found more than 100 shell casings on the blood-drenched sidewalk. 

Investigators determined it was a “targeted hit.” The shooters were after a specific person. The 20 innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire weren’t even a consideration. The gangsters, who police say were likely paid for the assassination, haven’t been caught.  

This isn’t Birmingham’s only brush with extreme gang violence. In July, four people were shot and killed and 10 were wounded in a shooting outside another nightclub. In February, four people were murdered while standing outside of a library. 

Officials have offered a $100,000 reward for information about Saturday night’s shooting. Alabama lawmakers even sponsored a bill that would outlaw conversion switches, which turn a legal semi-automatic pistol into a machinegun, even though the switches are already heavily regulated under federal law – possession is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison. 

One frustrated Birmingham Police officer told CNN the killings “have more to do with culture than they do criminality. We’re seeing far too many arguments being settled by bullets.”

Biden’s Nonresponse 

The Biden-Harris administration weaponized the ATF soon after taking office, but rather than siccing ATF agents on inner city gang members who increasingly use illegal machine guns and are responsible for the majority of the shootings and murders in the country, the ATF has been ordered to target law-abiding gun dealers and gun owners instead, most often for simple clerical errors or some minor violation of ATF’s everchanging rules. 

Joe Biden has issued more than 40 anti-gun executive orders since becoming president, but not a single one does anything at all to take guns from the hands of criminal street gang members. 

The ATF claims it’s a participant in Project Safe Neighborhoods, a federal program designed “to reduce gun violence and other violent crime, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone.” However, most of the ATF’s investigations occur after the fact, after local law enforcement officers who aren’t afraid to confront armed gangsters make an arrest and discover an illegal conversion switch or some other violation of federal law. 

To be clear, most of ATF’s highly touted arrests take place within the comfy confines of their field offices, not on the streets where it actually matters…where agents should be deployed. After all, possession of stolen firearms, full auto conversion switches, and possession by a convicted felon are all federal crimes that are well within ATF’s responsibility. 

No Crips or Bloods 

Rather than attacking gang violence head-on, the Biden-Harris administration cannot even say ‘gang violence.’ They talk instead about groups of youths or “at-risk teens.” They demonize the gangsters’ tools, but never the gangsters themselves. To do otherwise would be racist, they mistakenly believe. However, forcing law-abiding residents of the cities impacted by those gangs to live trapped in their homes because of gang-related crime is about as racist as it gets. This is mimicked by the corporate media that ignore the problem because they don’t want to offend anyone by citing an arrestee’s race or gang affiliation. 

Today’s gangsters aren’t the Bloods and Crips that law enforcement encountered during the 1980s and 1990s. While a few still claim some type of traditional gang affiliation, most are drug crews who are drawn together solely to make money rather than out of allegiance to a specific gang. 

These crews are primarily armed with handguns, not “assault weapons” as the Biden-Harris administration would have you believe. They acquire their illegal handguns the old-fashioned way – by either stealing them or buying them from other criminals. The gangsters aren’t purchasing them at local gun shops, so cracking down on gun dealers is a waste of time and resources that would be better spent cracking down on the actual gang members. 

Add to that weak-willed, George Soros-funded “progressive” prosecutors who are responsible for the catch-and-release policies seen in most major cities and a revolving door of criminals and skyrocketing crime rates follow. 

Why This Matters

Gang violence impacts all of us. Prohibition, which makes the problem significantly worse, led directly to the National Firearms Act of 1934 and its inane $200 stamps. 

Gang interdiction isn’t rocket science, but it requires the type of leadership we haven’t seen at the federal level in decades. There are strategies that have proven effective, including RICO Act prosecutions, sentence enhancements for gang membership and mandatory minimums, such as Florida’s 10-20-Life law. 

So-called gang experts will say we can’t arrest our way out of the problem, which is partially true. Gangs are a community problem, and any solution must involve the community. However, before they can marshal community resources – such as families, educators and clergy – the killings must stop or at least slow down. This is where the federal government with its nearly unlimited resources could play a significant role, if gang interdiction ever becomes a federal priority. 

While the Biden-Harris administration doesn’t recognize gangs or gangsters as problems, they’re quick to cite their bloody handiwork as justification for their constant infringements of our civil rights. In other words, the Biden-Harris administration uses gang violence as an excuse to crack down on legal gun ownership by law-abiding Americans.

This has happened before. 

“To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless.” Lysander Spooner said that, an American abolitionist and essayist. Spooner died in 1887, but his words still ring true. 

The next administration must target gang violence. It must become a federal law enforcement priority. It’s time to stop ignoring the killings. 

 

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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.