Thus far, Biden’s messaging on crime has been peculiarly narrow in scope. Asked last month whether Biden believes that there is a “crime problem in this country,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said, “I would say certainly there is a gun problem, and that’s something the president would say.” Indeed, it is. Today, CNBC reports, President Biden will launch a new anti-crime push that focuses in exclusively on guns. Among the policies the administration will adopt are a “zero-tolerance policy for federally licensed gun dealers who violate gun sales laws, such as background check requirements,” and the “the creation of five new federal strike forces led by the ATF to monitor and intercept firearm smuggling along several ‘significant gun trafficking corridors’ between major cities.” In and of themselves, these are both defensible plans. But they’re unlikely to do much of consequence. Between 1992 and 2015, crime in the United States dropped dramatically even as the American public bought hundreds of millions of new firearms and almost every state energetically liberalized its gun laws. The notion that the recent crime wave is the result of loosely drafted or enforced laws is an odd one, to say the least. If Biden is to focus in on this issue, he would do well to put aside the Kulturkampf stuff and focus in on the things that have changed over the last few years — among them, the villainization of the police, the widespread encouragement of rioting, the abolition of cash bail in many cities and jurisdictions, a dramatic rise in drug addiction, and the installation of a host of district attorneys who are not actually interested in enforcing the law.