The Biden administration is not trying to address an issue or fix a symptom. It is targeting a phantasm. The president has yet to address fully how to combat the larger issue of illegally acquired firearms used to commit offenses.

Based on the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, the Justice Department reported in 2019 that “among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source.” Read that again. Among those individuals arrested, convicted, and sentenced, 90% of the firearms used in gun-related crimes did not come from legal sources, which include gun shows.

Astoundingly, only 0.8% of prisoners who had a firearm during their offense legally “obtained it at a gun show.” So, less than 1% of all firearms used in gun-related offenses came from gun shows. This is fascinating, seeing that the current administration and congressional majority would have us believe the “gun show loophole” is one area where the plague of gun violence is spawning from and it is just “common sense” to address it. But yet again, the facts show this is an illusion.

What is not an illusion is this: If the Biden administration successfully shoves firearm regulation through Congress or enables it through executive action, Biden will be solely responsible for criminalizing the estimated 72 million people who legally own firearms, as if our prison and legal system weren’t overburdened enough. So much for common sense.