Joe Biden promised during a CNN town hall Wednesday night that he will continue his push to eliminate the sale of certain handguns and rifles.
“I’m the only guy that ever got — passed legislation when I was a senator to make sure we eliminated assault weapons.
“The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon, whether it’s a, whether it’s a 9mm pistol or whether it’s a rifle, is ridiculous.
“I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things…”
They're not hiding their intentions. Joe Biden says he wants to ban handguns — not merely AR-15s like their previous dishonest talking points suggested. Watch Biden stumble through this town hall answer. pic.twitter.com/DI3CDTN1wL
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) July 22, 2021
Though Biden has been less obvious in the past about destroying gun rights, his Freudian slip of the tongue — or Dementia-induced rambling — about eliminating handguns and rifles comes as no surprise because it’s been a goal of his for a very long time (via Daily Wire):
Biden was a leading proponent and sponsor of the federal “assault weapons” ban, a subset of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Throughout his career, he has generally been supportive of curtailing Second Amendment rights. Biden has also supported mandating five-day waiting periods for gun purchases, as well as closing the alleged “gun show loophole.” Biden supports a ban on the undefinable sub-class of firearms referred to as so-called “assault weapons” — a line of thought that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the banning of all semi-automatic firearms in America. (emphasis mine)
Back in April, Biden determined that none of our constitutional rights are “absolute,” so he channeled his inner Barack Obama and used his pen and phone — who needs a Constitution? — to issue a boatload of executive orders addressing what he called an “epidemic” of gun violence:
“Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment.
“They’re phony arguments suggesting these are Second Amendment rights at stake with what we’re talking about. But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.”
“So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution,” he added. “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic. And it’s an international embarrassment.”
Biden introduced a list of six measures in his executive order, including one laying the groundwork for banning handguns, and he directed the Department of Justice to:
- Propose rules to make “ghost guns” — homemade weapons without a serial number that are more difficult to track — subject to background checks
- Propose model “red flag” legislation for states that could help law enforcement keep firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals
- Reclassify pistols modified with stabilizer braces to be subject to the National Firearms Act. (emphasis mine)
Right on cue, House Republicans seized Biden’s townhall performance as an opportunity to fundraise when they sent a tweet vowing to never let Biden strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights.
Political opportunism aside, Republicans weren’t all that committed to protecting our gun rights when Trump was in office.
Trump spent his time in office as a pro-gun-control, anti-Second Amendment president, and he wasn’t shy about using his pen and phone. For example, he issued an executive order banning bump stocks — an order that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down earlier this year.
During his presidency, Trump openly embraced Nancy Pelosi’s gun-control agenda, pushed for enhanced background checks, and proposed expanding red flag laws on a national level — three anti-gun priorities included in Biden’s executive orders.
Biden’s order demanding the creation of model red flag legislation for the states will also include incentives (money) to bribe states into passing red flag laws, and he intends to use state-level, anti-gun laws to create a national version of the unconstitutional gun-grabbing legislation.
Unfortunately, the same Republican Party promising to stop Biden’s push to eliminate handguns and rifles have had a national red flag law on its radar screen for years.
In accordance to Trump’s anti-gun agenda, Sen. Lindsey Graham co-sponsored a red flag bill with Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal that gave federal courts jurisdiction over the states, and Sen. Marco Rubio introduced the TAPS Act, a bill that requires police to give EVERYONE a personal threat assessment (adults and children) in order to single out those they deem as future threats and “stop dangerous individuals before they can commit an act of violence.”
In other words, there’s no difference between the parties when it comes to protecting gun rights and the Constitution.
In a clear and obvious display of constitutional ignorance or agenda-driven bias, Biden defended his anti-gun rights executive orders by claiming that the Second Amendment prevented “certain people” from owning a gun.
“From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning of the Second Amendment existed [sic], certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons.”
Biden has suggested in the past that a “rational policy” would be one “that says you cannot have 20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon,” and he has also stated that he wants to ban “clips that have multiple bullets in them,” which critics argue would be an effective ban on most semi-automatic firearms.
But there’s nothing “rational” about Biden’s push to eliminate the sale of handguns and rifles.
I leave you with this quote from Patrick Henry (Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Jonathan Elliot, ed. 1836, vol. 3 p. 168):
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress?
If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
Patrick Henry’s remarks are just as relevant today as they were 185 years ago — even more so in light of Biden’s townhall declaration about his push to eliminate handguns.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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