Biden’s First Move on 2A  by Tom Reynolds

Last Thursday, in a speech intended to mislead rather than inform, President Biden took his first steps towards neutering the 2^nd Amendment (2A).  Some of the left-wing media described the steps as “modest”.  That same left-wing media is optimistic that more gun control is coming since Biden said “much more needs to be done”.

Biden (or whoever is pulling his strings) is ruling by executive order as the Democrat Party is faced with a dilemma.  Their leadership is radically anti 2^nd Amendment but last year a record number of NICS Checks were processed and gun sales also set records.  Some of those record setting categories were blacks and women, two constituencies the Democrats depend upon to reliably vote Democrat.  If they continue to push gun control, Democrats may face the wrath of their new gun owning constituency in the 2022 elections.

Joe Biden tried to justify his assault on 2A by telling us that our rights are not “absolute”.  Well, he’s a little bit right...but just a little bit.  As he pointed out, even under the First Amendment freedoms, you can’t cry fire in a crowded theatre (unless there really is a fire).  But the Constitution is there to protect the people from its government, so the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has developed some guidelines called “Strict Scrutiny” to define the limited way in which constitutional rights can be violated.  Per “Strict Scrutiny”, an invasion of our rights requires both a compelling government interest and must be narrowly tailored to achieve its purpose in the least restrictive way.  Just because the Biden Administration does not like 2A is not a compelling government interest and he is a long way from doing it in the least restrictive way.  Take for instance, Biden ordering his Justice Department to develop model “red flag” legislation for states.  Red Flag laws would appear to violate the 2nd, 4^th, 5^th 6^th and 14^th Amendment.  It’s hard to call that that the least restrictive way.

In defending his call for Red Flag laws, Biden didn’t point out the historical statistics that show that 92%-94% of murders are by unlawfully attained weapons.  And as should have been expected, he added race to the debate by pointing out that gun violence remains the leading cause of death for Black men between the ages of 15 and 34.  He failed to mention that most killings of black men are gang and drug related and that the majority of black men are killed by other black men.  Of black men killed by police, the majority are killed by black police officers.  (But the latter facts would destroy the Democrats favorite talking point: racism.)  

Biden said: “We should… eliminate gun manufacturers from the immunity they receive from Congress…Most people don’t realize, the only industry in America, a billion dollar industry, that can’t be sued… are gun manufacturers”.  That’s absolutely a lie. The protections Biden criticizes flow from the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That Act shields gun makers from frivolous suits, not from all suits whatsoever. They can be sued for product defects, negligence, when the transfer of a gun was made knowing it would be used to commit a crime, and when manufacturers or sellers violated state or federal law in marketing or selling a gun.  The victims of drunken drivers don’t sue Coors or Ford but Biden and the progressive left wish Ruger and Winchester could be sued for gun violence.

Biden claimed that firearms purchased at gun shows are exempt from background checks.  FFL gun sellers are required to do the same NICS Checks at gun shows as they do at their shops.  It’s true that private sales might avoid NICS at gun shows but they could avoid NICS elsewhere and many gun shows require a NICS check on all sales, whether sold by FFL’s or privately.  And of course, surveys of imprisoned criminals have shown that over 90% of their weapons were obtained illegally, not from FFL’s or at gun shows.

Piling on, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department will give over $1 billion in funding to over a dozen programs to use and create "evidence-based intervention strategies" to reduce gun violence.  (Can we expect 2^nd Amendment advocates like the NRA and John Lott to receive some of that funding in order to ensure the proposals are “evidence based” and not emotion based?  The odds are better on a cold day in Hell.)

Biden announced the nomination of David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).  Chipman once worked for BATFE and more recently for anti-2A billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, then at anti-2A’s Public Safety Solutions and later as senior policy adviser at anti-2A Giffords, a gun control organization led by an anti-2A former Arizona congresswoman.  (Don’t expect a fair shake for 2A from Chipman.) 

You can also expect the same level of honesty from Chipman as we get from Biden.  On the Reddit website, he commented about the Waco siege (where he was present), “At Waco, cult members used 2 .50 caliber Barretts to shoot down two Texas Air National Guard helicopters”.  Unfortunately for Chipman – but fortunately for helicopter pilots – no helicopters were shot down at the Waco siege.

Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond repeated a tired old adage that is beyond silly, “When the Second Amendment was written, people were stuffing gunpowder into a musket to shoot. Now you have guns that can shoot 100 rounds in a minute and that’s just completely different”.  And a world where politicians can lie and the lie circulates the entire world in minutes is completely different from what the founders envisioned when they wrote the First Amendment but he is not calling for 1A’s end.  (Of course, Richmond and the Democrats would secretly be happy to abolish free speech - and gun ownership - for everyone but themselves.) 

Biden also said the orders he'll sign won't impact Americans' rights to own guns under the 2nd Amendment.  That would be wonderful if his definition of 2^nd Amendment rights were as broad as his definition of “infrastructure”.  Unfortunately, his definition of 2^nd Amendment rights would fit on the head of a pin. 

Gun control is not about guns. Gun control is about who controls America and Joe Biden and the progressives are intent on controlling America.