The Patriot Post® · What Part of 'Shall Not Be Infringed' Does Biden Not Understand?

On a normal day, Joe Biden calls a lid on events well before dinner time. Yesterday, he stayed up late to deliver a 7:30 p.m. address from the White House in order to lie about our Second Amendment rights and sanctimoniously demand they be curtailed. One might even say infringed. Then he promptly left for a beach vacation in Delaware.

Before all of the murdered children in Uvalde, Texas, had even been laid to rest, Biden insisted that their deaths must be exploited to achieve Democrat policy goals. “This is not about taking away anyone’s guns,” he claimed, before telling us what guns he’d take away. The big demands he made are the same ones Democrats make every time there’s a murder that fits the right narrative:

We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21. Strengthen background checks. Enact safe storage laws and red flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability. Address the mental health crisis deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence.

“For God’s sake,” he thundered, “how much more carnage are we willing to accept?”

As our Brian Mark Weber notes today, guns save lives countless times every year. Democrat gun control proposals, by contrast, would virtually never have any effect on the kinds of mass murders shameless politicians use to make emotional pleas for them. The possible exception in this case is Biden’s call to raise the purchase age for rifles to 21. Perhaps that roadblock would have been enough; perhaps not — it wouldn’t have stopped nine of the 10 worst mass shootings in U.S. history, and the under-21 killer at Sandy Hook stole his gun.

Notably, some folks are not above lying on background check forms, either. Ask Hunter Biden.

To his credit, Biden at least mentioned the mental health crisis in our nation. That is indeed a huge part of what fuels these sorts of attacks. But nowhere in his speech did the president talk about the fatherless young men and gang-bangers who committed the vast majority of the country’s 21,000 murders last year. He didn’t talk about the societal breakdown and drug-fueled crime in Democrat-run urban centers. And he didn’t mention the common denominators for nearly all mass killers.

To put it mildly, it seems to us any serious discussion about doing something about “gun violence” requires at least acknowledging what drives it.

“Why is our culture suddenly producing so many young men who want to murder innocent people?” asked Senator Mike Lee. “Could things like fatherlessness, the breakdown of families, isolation from civil society, or the glorification of violence be contributing factors?”

Now, let’s define a couple of terms yet again. “Assault weapon” is a bogus term deployed by the Left (and adopted by too many on the Right) to describe semiautomatic rifles that look scary because of certain cosmetic features. They are not machine guns. They do not spray bullets the way they’re sometimes depicted in movies and television. Sporting rifles like the AR-15 function in exactly the same way as many other (more powerful) hunting rifles and the vast majority of handguns — one trigger pull fires one bullet.

“High-capacity magazines” are, in fact, standard-capacity mags. Democrats want a limit of 10 rounds, even though virtually every normal size pistol magazine holds more than that. AR-15s come standard with 30-round magazines. If you’re in one of the millions of annual self-defense situations in America, especially if you’re facing a home invasion by more than one attacker, you’d probably be grateful to have more than 10 rounds. Labeling these magazines as “high-capacity” is nothing more than an effort to scare people who know nothing about guns.

Whatever you call these guns and magazines, categorically banning either one is a flagrant violation of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v. Heller that explicated the rights enshrined in it. The Court upheld the right to firearms that “are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes today” and further declared that any “categorical ban of such weapons violates the Second Amendment.”

The millions of AR-15s owned by millions of Americans surely fit this definition, as would the magazines that, again, come standard with such firearms.

By the way, Biden falsely blamed Republicans for the murders committed with ARs after the federal ban expired in 2004. But rifles of any type are used in fewer murders each year than are hands and feet.

Next, let’s talk about liability protection for gun manufacturers. Biden and the Democrats love to harp on this idea, but its real purpose is to enrich their trial lawyer donors and bankrupt gunmakers.

We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity.

Imagine — imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued — where we’d be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.

That is a false comparison, and there are at least two big problems with Biden’s proposal. First, unlike tobacco use, gun ownership is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. Subjecting that right to constant litigation is a recipe for disaster (by design). Second, Biden claims this situation is unique, but can he name a single other industry in the nation that would be found liable for the criminal use of its product? What’s outrageous is the push to single out the gun industry.

Is Ford liable for the recent deaths in Waukesha, Wisconsin, because the murder weapon was one of its SUVs? Perhaps Biden couldn’t say because he didn’t show up there to politically exploit those deaths at the hand of a racist black man.

Finally, Biden has made a habit of dishonestly rewriting history so as to say that the Second Amendment “is not absolute.” Leftists think this about all of our constitutional rights. One exception is the “right” not found anywhere in the Constitution — the “right” to kill children who are inside the womb and not yet inside a classroom. Every day in America, roughly 2,200 preborn babies are killed.

“There have always been limitations on what weapons you can own in America,” Biden argued. That’s not true. He didn’t repeat his often-debunked Revolutionary War-era cannon canard this time, though, opting instead to point to a 90-year-old law about machine guns.

More to the point, as our Mark Alexander fired back, “American gun owners aren’t hoping to use firearms to overthrow the government. But possessing that self-defense capability is rooted in a spirit of self-reliance and a love of Liberty that has its origin in the American Revolution. What the Left is really trying to break is that spirit and our devotion to Liberty.”

In conclusion, we can only point to these wise words uttered nearly 40 years ago: “I have never believed that additional gun control or federal registration of guns would reduce crime. I am convinced that a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control.”

That was Joe Biden in July 1985.

Last night, Biden used the word “enough” 12 times, and we couldn’t agree more. Enough with the lies. Enough with the malicious blame-shifting. Enough with the attempts to infringe upon the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens.