When President Joe Biden (D) again called for a ban on popular, commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles on October 13—a goal the White House press secretary repeated on October 24—he was attempting to dictate to Americans what are the key issues at stake in this midterm election on November 8.
But then, President Biden has long misunderstood the American love for freedom.
President Biden said in July that “the American people agree with this common sense action” when referring to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to ban the sale of firearms that use a technology invented in the late nineteenth century.
So Biden, and one supposes many members of his administration, believe that taking away the freedom to own an old technology—semi-automatic firearms have been popularly sold for well over 100 years to the American public—is a winning campaign issue at a time when far-left policies have arguably caused a crime wave.
The thing is, voters say they don’t buy this false narrative.
A survey by The New York Times/Siena College found that just 1% of likely voters said “gun policies” are the “most-important” problem facing America today.
Actually, instead of blaming semi-automatic firearms for the actions of murderers and other criminals, millions of Americans have bought their first gun over the last few years—and the number-one firearm type first-time gun buyers purchase is the semi-automatic pistol.
In the Times/Siena poll, 44% of likely voters said the economy and inflation (26% said the “economy” and 18% said “inflation”) were their top two concerns. The old adage “it’s the economy stupid” is still relevant.
And this poll was hardly an outlier. Actually, as The Hill reported on October 18, “Inflation, crime and immigration are entrenched as voters’ top concerns heading into next month’s midterm elections.” The Hill was citing a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll.
Also, a Monmouth University poll found that “[f]ewer than 1 in 10 select … gun control (9%)” as their most-important concern in this election; in fact, the same poll found only a 30% approval for President Biden on gun control.
This, of course, hasn’t stopped President Biden from calling for new gun and magazine bans. Americans already own over 24.4 million of the semi-automatic rifles Biden would call “assault weapons.” It is difficult to even measure the huge number of so-called “high-capacity” magazines Americans own today. Clearly, these rifles, along with semi-automatic handguns and shotguns, are in common use and therefore have constitutional protections.
All of this shows that the Biden administration is living in an ideological bubble. It believes that blaming freedom for a crime wave is a believable argument—even when policy changes, such as cash-free bail policies in some areas, are obviously letting violent criminals walk, allowing them to continue to prey on the public. Despite a lot of mainstream-media spin, a large percentage of voters are not buying the Biden administration’s false claim.
This election is, and must be, a law-and-order referendum that will, hopefully, force public officials across America to alter policies to target the criminal class in our society, not our freedom.
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