The headline in the afternoon was,

Biden has a long, frustrating history of pushing for gun control.

As president, Joseph R. Biden Jr. finds himself in a position distressingly similar to the one he confronted eight years ago as vice president: trying to figure out a way to stop mass shootings and meeting resistance from conservative gun owners and their political allies.

...

President Barack Obama chose not to act immediately following the massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. in 2012, as many Democrats had hoped, by pushing for a quick vote on gun control legislation.

I was beginning to get irritated and had no memory of that.

Instead, he delegated the task of coming up with a package of reforms to Mr. Biden...

From his earliest days in the administration. Mr. Biden pushed Mr. Obama to do more on guns, to little avail, his advisers later said. “Even before Newtown, the vice president had wanted the administration to push harder on the issue,” Bruce Reed, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff as vice president, and still a trusted adviser, told a reporter in 2015.

Now, I was just curious. I text messaged the Second Unfortunate:

Hmm. What was it with Obama? Terminal caution? Jeez.

She responded:

I remember that as well. Biden was much stronger in gun control. Any insight from the Obama book?

I texted back that her memory was better than mine and that no, A Promised Land was only 1,067 pages long and so just covered Obama’s first term.

I asked my ex if she had ever read why President Obama was so cautious and half-measured. Before she could respond,

I just thought of something. Obama’s mantra was DDSS, “Don’t do stupid shit.” Very cautious governing philosophy.

"Don't do stupid shit" is just two words longer than "Don't do." The message could get lost. It was a mantra for inaction.

Now tonight, after POJO made a speech on Boulder, the headline is,

The contrast is just so stark.