Last night, Joe Biden put on his angry eyes and addressed the nation about gun control. In a meandering speech full of misleading statements and obfuscations, the president focused on banning “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines instead of even entertaining common-sense solutions that could directly protect schools.

Biden, an old man who should have been retired long ago, perfectly encapsulated the outdated, ineffective thinking that so often flows from within the innards of Washington, DC.

BIDEN: "Enough. We should limit how many rounds a weapon can hold. Why in God's name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30-round magazines, that let mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes?" pic.twitter.com/JUstaS6zxb

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 2, 2022

Shouting “enough” is apparently what passes for sentient thought inside the beltway, where emotion is king, but “doing something” is not actually a solution to anything. It takes about three seconds to reload a magazine. The idea that a mass shooter with evil in their heart is going to refrain from committing a heinous act because they are now limited to buying 10-round magazines is asinine. It’s an emotional, vapid idea that sounds good for the press but does nothing to limit the damage that can be caused by a determined individual.

Further, magazines are pieces of plastic with a spring in them. With today’s technology, altering magazines for higher capacity (or guns to accept higher-capacity magazines that already exist) is something the government will never have the ability to prevent. Why focus on something so meaningless? The answer is that Democrats care more about the appearance of doing something than actually doing something.

It’s not 1994 anymore. Biden doesn’t seem to realize that, though, which isn’t surprising given his mental state. His prescriptions are outdated and ineffective, crafted in a world that hasn’t existed in decades. There is more to governing than proposing the same tired ideas over and over.

Then there’s Biden’s plugging of “red flag” laws.

“Red flag laws could have stopped both of these shooters” says Joe Biden

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) June 2, 2022

Again, it’s like I’m taking crazy pills, except I know I’m not. New York, the state in which one of the two mass shootings the president is citing took place, has one of the strictest, broadest red flag laws in the country. It did not stop the shooter. Why? Because red flag laws, as much as they make people feel good, are akin to trying to stop an army of ants with a magnifying glass on a cloudy day. Yes, they may have some efficacy in regards to suicides if a family member speaks up, but when it comes to a shooter with no criminal history, they are highly ineffective. Never mind the due process concerns of violating a person’s rights just because another person made a report.

Meanwhile, discussions of locking the doors of schools or providing more security get mocked. In short, Biden’s speech was Washington in a nutshell. It was rampant emotionalism wrapped in faux empathy being used to push policies that won’t work to prevent mass shootings. I’d say we are smarter than this as a nation, but I’m not sure we are.