Photo by Gage Skidmore courtesy of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0; image composite by A1F staff
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders are effectively in a two-horse race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination after the results of Super Tuesday.
After a dismal showing, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suspended his campaign and endorsed Biden. Sen. Elizabeth Warren remains in the race, but has yet to win a single contest, including her home state of Massachusetts.
Now that the race is down to Biden and Sanders, the two are vying for the party’s nomination, but their stances on the Second Amendment are, according to their public positions, almost identical.
Both support expanding background checks, red-flag laws and complete bans of the most commonly owned semi-automatic rifles in the country, which each improperly labels as “assault weapons” on their respective campaign websites. This is just the beginning of their anti-gun agendas.
To take it a step further, Biden explicitly supports a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Biden believes manufacturers should be held liable for the acts of criminals and that law-abiding citizens should pay the price, the cost of which is the ability to protect themselves from those very same criminals.
Biden has now also secured several endorsements from former candidates, including Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. He also recently called upon failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke to “take care of the gun problem” on the eve of Super Tuesday. O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, made headlines in a September debate when he said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
Sanders, meanwhile, has also made it clear that he is an anti-gun opportunist who will cave to the demands of his radical base, no matter how extreme their stances may be. His campaign website lists a plethora of anti-gun measures he would take if elected. Perhaps most concerning among them is his “buyback program,” a plan to confiscate popular semi-automatic firearms.
Both Biden and Sanders also vow, in no uncertain terms, to take on one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the world: the NRA. In fact, they both display their contempt for the organization almost immediately on their “gun-safety” pages.
Whoever the Democrat’s nominee ultimately is (including an improbable comeback from Warren, who “has a plan” to restrict your rights), they see the Second Amendment as a problem that needs to be solved.
