“Ban assault weapons now,” the White House’s official account posted Wednesday on X, accompanied by the caption, “It’s time.”
The post comes less than a week before the 2024 election and on the back of countless claims from President Joe Biden (D)—and yes, he is technically still the sitting president—that nothing he or Vice President Kamala Harris (D) want to do infringes on the Second Amendment.
“From our cold, dead hands,” replied the NRA with an American flag included.
The renewed call to ban “assault weapons” also follows the Harris’ recent claims that former President Donald Trump (R), if elected again, would “terminate the Constitution” and noted that she is the one in favor of the Second Amendment.
Harris’ campaign issues page echoes this call as well, stating, “She’ll ban assault weapons.”
She also previously said on the debate stage in September: “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So, stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
The reality is that banning rifles lawfully owned by millions and millions of Americans does violate the Second Amendment and she has also been in favor of gun confiscation.
Estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) show that there are more than 28 million AR-type rifles in circulation. They are clearly protected under the “common-use” standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008). With nearly 30 million of these rifles owned by law-abiding Americans, that standard is easily met.
As for the ban that Biden and Harris are so eager to impose, its previous iteration showed how ineffective these bans are. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed in 1994 and that sunset in 2004, was found to have little, if any, effect on crime.
“The congressionally mandated study of the federal ‘assault weapon ban’ of 1994-2004 found that the ban had no impact on crime, in part because ‘the banned guns were never used in more than a modest fraction of gun murders,’” reported the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA).
