President Joe Biden (D) just couldn’t fade out of the political limelight without taking yet another swing at lawful gun owners. On September 26, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat presidential nominee, announced new executive actions aimed at further curtailing Americans’ Second Amendment-protected rights.
Under the auspices of the ill-conceived Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which the NRA-ILA repeatedly warned about while under consideration in Congress, the president and vice president imposed executive actions involving devices to convert semi-automatic firearms into full-automatic and active-shooter drills in schools. On the first matter, the executive order creates an interagency Emerging Firearms Threats Task Force chaired by the director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
“The threat posed by the continued proliferation of these devices is particularly acute,” the executive order claimed. “Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Task Force shall submit to the president, through the Director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a report containing a risk assessment and strategy to stop the proliferation of machine gun conversion devices, with a particular emphasis on the devices used to convert a standard, semi-automatic firearm to a machine gun.”
The order is addressing the issue of so-called “Glock switches,” pieces of metal or plastic that can be used to illegally convert Glock pistols to fire full-auto, as opposed to the normal, as-manufactured-and-sold semi-auto function of the popular handguns. Also called “Glock auto-sears,” the devices work by applying force to the trigger bar to prevent it from limiting fire to one round of ammunition per trigger pull.
Of course, since Glock doesn’t make such devices—the names are intentionally misleading. And it’s important to note that converting any firearm to fire full-auto is a federal felony, and even possession of a so-called “Glock switch” can land you in federal prison for 10 years.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) says criminals converting handguns to fire full-auto has become a growing problem. But since this already runs afoul of federal law, those doing so are criminals, which Biden and Harris will never mention.
It’s hard to understand what Biden and Harris seek to accomplish through that executive action. Perhaps the task force can find a way to make the devices even more illegal. Only time will tell. The executive action also further cracks down on 3D-printed firearms, which the president calls a “safety threat.”
The other executive action announced at the White House ceremony involved school-based active-shooter drills. While any mass murder at a school—or anywhere else—is a horrifying act of evil that we must prevent, Biden has made it sound like such atrocities are very common, when, in fact, they are rare.
During the ceremony, Biden, who has often said there are more “mass shootings than days in the year,” claimed he has “been to all but three mass shootings in—in the United States of America.” That claim is patently false.
The executive order stated: “Within 110 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Surgeon General, shall develop and publish information on recommended areas for future research that can help inform policymakers, educators, students, parents, and other relevant stakeholders about different types of school-based active-shooter drills, the appropriate frequency of such drills and the effects of such drills on students and educators.”
Randy Kozuch, executive director of NRA-ILA, said the latest executive action was just one more attempt by the Biden-Harris administration to “deflect attention from their soft-on-crime policies that have emboldened criminals in our country.”
“The orders are notably heavy on election-year rhetoric and light on substance,” Kozuch said. “It's no secret that Americans don't feel safe under the Biden-Harris Administration, as evidenced by the record number of firearms being purchased for the defense of self and family.”
The new executive actions came as the president and vice president celebrated the first anniversary of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which NRA-ILA aptly described as an effort that “funnels taxpayer funds to career firearm prohibition activists” to “create an anti-gun culture within all branches of the federal bureaucracy and dream up ever more ways to suppress Second Amendment rights.”
Incidentally, at the ceremony Biden, for the umpteenth time, repeated his favorite quip about “deer wearing Kevlar vests.” That statement, which has nothing to do with the issue of criminal violence, was dumb and not funny the first time he said it and yet he continues to repeat it.
It’s notable that Harris was front and center in announcing this executive action. She has already said that, if elected in November, she’ll further curtail gun-owners’ rights.
