Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, just published his anti-gun wish list. Guess what’s on it—yup, you and your freedom. Now guess what’s not—right again, there is very little on it about targeting criminals who use guns.
Biden’s list includes gun bans, forced confiscations of guns, mandatory licensing and many other restrictions. Put together, he is looking to effectively smother the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
Add to this the fact that he’d nominate judges, including any justices to possible openings on the U.S. Supreme Court, who would vote to gut the Second Amendment of our individual right, and it’s clear he would, if he got his way, terminate our right to keep and bear arms.
Biden begins by bragging that he has singled out your preeminent civil-liberties association: “Joe Biden has taken on the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the national stage and won—twice. In 1993, he shepherded through Congress the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which established the background check system that has since kept more than 3 million firearms out of dangerous hands. In 1994, Biden—along with Senator Dianne Feinstein—secured the passage of 10-year bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As president, Joe Biden will defeat the NRA again.”
Let’s pause for some fact checking. The NRA was actually instrumental in fixing the legislation that created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). As for the 1994 “Federal Assault Weapons Ban,” the NRA won this battle in 2004 by lobbying for legislators to allow it to sunset.
A few sentences later, Biden’s campaign website takes credit for “increasing the number of records in the background check system, and expanding funding for mental health services.” Actually, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has been spearheading this effort to update NICS with legitimate records of prohibited persons (see, FixNICS.org), with lobbying help from the NRA, for years. The Obama administration was largely an obstacle to improving this system.
Biden then says that he would repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), so that gun makers and dealers can again be sued because someone used a legally purchased firearm to commit a crime. This is like allowing people to sue GM if, say, someone used a Chevy to harm someone else.
Biden lies about this legislation by saying the PLCAA “protects these manufacturers from being held civilly liable for their products—a protection granted to no other industry.” The PLCAA plainly says that gun manufacturers can be held civilly liable if they make a faulty product, if they break the law, and more. Biden has spent his life in politics, but nevertheless he should know that omission is a form of lying.
Biden’s declaration then says he’d “[b]an the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” After that he says he’d “[r]egulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act.” This, of course, would create a federal registry for these popular semi-automatic rifles—and maybe for other firearms, as the “assault weapons” term is a political one that is very expandable.
After saying he’d make people register their semi-automatic rifles, Biden says he’d use government funds to “[b]uy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities…. This will give individuals who now possess assault weapons or high-capacity magazines two options: sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act.”
Biden then says, to reduce “stockpiling of weapons,” he supports “legislation restricting the number of firearms an individual may purchase per month to one.”
Biden also wants to prey on Social Security recipients by reinstating “the Obama-Biden policy to keep guns out of the hands of certain people unable to manage their affairs for mental reasons, which President Trump reversed.” In 2016, the Obama administration weaponized the Social Security Administration against seniors by sending the names of those, for example, who needed help filling out forms, to NICS so these citizens wouldn’t be allowed to purchase firearms.
In his long list of gun bans, restrictions and more, Biden also says he’d “enact legislation to give states and local governments grants to require individuals to obtain a license prior to purchasing a gun.” So this right, as protected in the U.S. Bill of Rights, wouldn’t be a right at all once Biden was done; it would just be a legal privilege citizens could apply for with the full knowledge their right to keep and bear arms could be denied or taken away at any time at the whim of government.
As a caveat, Biden even says he’d “[p]ut America on the path to ensuring that 100% of firearms sold in America are smart guns.” This is a ban on every gun now sold in America, so that maybe someday we can have battery-powered, experimental models that somehow might identify users with bracelets, fingerprint readers or other devices.
Biden, of course, includes “universal” background check laws, “legislation requiring firearm owners to store weapons safely in their homes” and much more in his comprehensive plan to turn you into a helpless victim in waiting.
As if we need to add something more to this list, Fred Guttenberg, a gun-control activist and Joe Biden surrogate, said that if Biden were in office right now he’d surely use the pandemic as an excuse to shut down all of America’s gun stores.
Whereas Obama often tried to hide his gun-control agenda, at least Biden is telling us what he really wants to do with our freedom—he wants to take it, every bit of it, from you and every other law-abiding U.S. citizen.
