As Obama and Trump did before him, Joe Biden assumed the role of dictator yesterday when he did an end run around the Constitution to begin dismantling the Second Amendment via anti-gun rights executive orders.
Early in 2014, Obama informed America that he wouldn’t wait for Congress to create the legislation he wanted. Instead, he ignored the Constitution by issuing decrees (i.e. executive orders) via his “pen and phone” despite his commitment as a candidate in 2007 to roll back such executive overreach.
“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.
Conservatives and Republicans — they’re not the same thing — were rightly outraged by Obama’s clear abuse of power and executive overreach. For example, Donald Trump tweeted out this response a few months after Obama made his threat:
Repubs must not allow Pres Obama to subvert the Constitution of the US for his own benefit & because he is unable to negotiate w/ Congress.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2014
However, Judge Andrew Napolitano accurately called the pen and phone threat “executive order tyranny” as he explained Obama’s true motivations:
“In a menacing statement at a cabinet meeting last month . . . the president has referred to his pen and his phone as a way of suggesting that he will use his power to issue executive orders, promulgate regulations and use his influence with his appointees in the government’s administrative agencies to continue the march to transform fundamentally the relationship of the federal government and individuals to his egalitarian vision when he is unable to accomplish that with legislation from Congress.” (emphasis mine)
Obama followed through on his threat, specifically in the area of gun control, by issuing a litany of executive “actions” designed to chip away at the Second Amendment.
Trump’s inability or unwillingness to negotiate with Congress along with his “only I can do it” narcissism left Obama in the dust when it came to using a pen and phone to get things done. In his first three years in office, Trump’s dictatorial abuse of power led to more executive orders being issued than we witnessed under Obama.
Like Obama, Trump has always been a pro-gun control and anti-Second Amendment president, and he wasn’t shy about doing an end run around the Constitution when necessary. For example, he issued an executive order banning bump stocks — an order that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a few weeks ago.
During his presidency, Trump’s anti-gun rights agenda took other forms, such as:
- Openly embracing Nancy Pelosi’s gun-control agenda
- Pushing for enhanced background checks
- Proposing an expansion of red flag laws on a national level
If those three things sound familiar, it might be because they were included in Joe Biden’s anti-gun rights executive orders announced yesterday as reported by TheHill.com.
Calling gun violence an “epidemic” and an “international embarrassment,” Biden rolled out a plethora of executive orders (or actions) loaded with Washington doublespeak about how he will address the issue without violating the Second Amendment — which means, of course, he’s doing the exact opposite.
Besides, according to Uncle Joe, none of our rights in the Constitution are “absolute.”
“Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment,” Biden said in the Rose Garden. “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, flanked in the Rose Garden by Vice President Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland, outlined six measures his administration will pursue to try to curb gun violence.
Biden directed the Justice Department to propose rules to make “ghost guns,” homemade weapons without a serial number that are more difficult to track, subject to background checks; to propose model “red flag” legislation for states that could help law enforcement keep firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals; and to reclassify pistols modified with stabilizer braces to be subject to the National Firearms Act. (emphasis mine)
In addition to creating a model for the states to use when creating red flag laws, Biden also wants a national version of the unconstitutional gun-grabbing legislation along with incentives (bribe money) for paying states that pass red flag laws of their own.
For the record, a national red flag law has been on the radar screens of Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio for years. In other words, there’s no difference between the parties when it comes to protecting gun rights and the Constitution.
Attendees at yesterday’s Rose Garden ceremony included several anti-gun rights advocates, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in 2012, parents of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings, and Brandon Wolfe, a survivor of the 2017 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.
This isn’t an insignificant list of names because Biden also announced yesterday that he is nominating David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Chipman is a gun control extremist, and he serves as an adviser to Giffords’ anti-gun rights organization.
Biden defended his anti-gun rights executive orders yesterday by saying, “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.”
A completely ignorant, agenda-driven claim. In fact, it’s a flat-out lie, historically speaking.
Check out 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 questions are just as relevant today as they were nearly 185 years ago.
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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