However, in a few cases, a sale that should not have been approved ends up getting greenlighted because the clock runs out. Biden proposes to change the law to forbid that. That probably is not going to happen and definitely should not happen: The deadline was put into the law in the first place to stop the federal government from using bureaucratic delays to create a shadow ban on firearms sales.

Here’s the thing: President Biden could do something about this problem — today — if he wanted to, and he doesn’t need Congress’s approval or any change in the law…

Sending somebody out to pick up those guns would be a real improvement for several reasons: For one, we’d be taking a gun out of the hand of a prohibited person, which is good in and of itself. Second, in almost every case, a prohibited person who buys from a licensed retailer does so by lying on his application — as Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, pretty obviously did when acquiring a handgun a few years ago. (Hunter Biden is a prohibited person because he is a drug addict, and if he had not lied about that fact on his application, then it would have been rejected.) That means that we not only have the opportunity to take the gun away, we also have the opportunity to arrest the offender for a serious gun crime. Often, there will be at least two charges that could be made: felon in possession (which by itself can bring as much as ten years in prison) and making a false statement to acquire a firearm — a fifth-degree federal felony.

If we wanted to, we could take those guns — and those criminals — off the streets.