Joe Biden moves a step closer to nationalizing California gun control
Using the tragic shooting that occurred in Sacramento, California, last week as a backdrop, Joe Biden leveled a one-two punch against the Second Amendment yesterday with his nomination of an anti-gun activist to lead the ATF and yet another gun control executive order.
The first punch came when Joe Biden nominated Steve Dettelbach as his new ATF director. As I wrote last week, Dettelbach’s record on protecting the Second Amendment is weaker than Biden’s first nominee, David Chipman, an anti-gun activist who had to withdraw from consideration because he was so extreme that even some Democrats wouldn’t support him.
The second punch was delivered when, as Obama and Trump did before him, Joe Biden whipped out his pen and phone and did an end run around the Constitution via an executive order banning so-called “ghost guns” — a move that will do absolutely nothing to reduce gun violence.
Put simply, a “ghost gun” is a catchall term for any firearm without a serial number. There are a variety of ways a person can come to own a firearm without a serial number that do not involve breaking federal law, which generally prohibits the removal of serial numbers but not, however, the ownership of a firearm without a serial number.
The California connection to yesterday’s announcement is no coincidence because Biden has made federalizing California gun control laws one of his top priorities, and he believes he can do so completely within the confines of the Constitution because, after all, none of our rights are “absolute.”
“Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment,” Biden said when he released his first round of anti-gun executive orders back in April 2021. “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.” (emphasis mine)
Biden’s first round of Second Amendment-killing executive orders also directed the DOJ and ATF to create proposals to ban so-called ghost guns, another failed California gun control law.
In fact, nearly item on Joe Biden’s gun control bucket list is based on laws that have failed in California, including his recently announced ban on ghost guns (via National Review):
California already has “universal” background checks. It has “red flag” laws and domestic-violence gun confiscation (often, without any real due process). It has an assault-weapon and magazine ban, deputizing citizens to enforce them. California has safe-storage laws and a ghost-gun ban. The state has a firearm-sales record and the strictest gun-dealer regulation in the nation. It empowers local authorities to further regulate firearms but not to deregulate. It has raised the allowable age even to buy a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21. In most municipalities, concealed-carry permits are almost impossible to get.
California is home to 111 laws — not counting the thousands passed in cities and counties — that restrict “the manner and space in which firearms can be used,” according to Boston University School of Public Health. “California has the strongest gun laws in the United States and has been a trailblazer for gun safety for the past 30 years,” says Giffords Law Center. The only thing California hasn’t done is outright ban semi-automatic weapons, which is where all these incremental restrictions are meant to lead. (emphasis mine)
On that last part, California has already attempted to ban semi-automatic weapons, but the law (Assault Weapons Control Act) was recently ruled unconstitutional by a United States District Court.
Still ahead in Uncle Joe’s war on gun rights is Extreme Risk Protection Orders (aka ERPOs or “red-flag” laws).
Included in Biden’s plethora of executive actions back in April 2121 was a proposal to create a template for states to pass their own versions of red flag laws, and he called for funding to provide incentives (bribe money) to states that pass them. He also called for legislation to nationalize the unconstitutional gun-grabbing legislation.
Biden made some headway on this front with the recently passed $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package that included funding for a new round of gun control legislation created by Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) as part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — legislation that has been called “red flag laws on steroids.”
Surprised to see a Republican working with a Democrat on gun control legislation? You shouldn’t be.
I predicted over a year ago that Republicans would eventually give Joe Biden’s gun control agenda overwhelming support, and what better way to do so than to use the omnibus spending bill as cover?
A nationalized red flag law has been on the radar screens of Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio for years, once again proving that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to their failure to protect gun rights and the Constitution.
Joe Biden once defended his anti-gun agenda 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.”
Constitutionally ignorant, agenda-driven nonsense. In fact, it’s a flat-out lie, historically speaking.
I’ve shared this quote from Patrick Henry before, but it bears repeating (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?”
For what it’s worth, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) sent out a heads-up tweet Sunday evening about Biden’s California-styled ghost gun executive order, saying: “The Constitution does not authorize the federal government to prevent you from making your own firearm. This a fact that has been recognized for 200+ years. Also, Article 1, Section 1 (literally the first operative sentence in the Constitution) says Congress makes law, not POTUS!”
Will Joe Biden succeed with his plan to nationalize California’s unconstitutional ghost gun ban, or will the Supreme Court do its job and defend our God-given, constitutionally protected rights?
I hope it’s the latter. But Washington has become a new axis of evil and enemy of liberty, so I’m not putting my faith in any branch of government when it comes to defending the Second Amendment or any other part of the Constitution.
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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