Joe Biden has a long history of saying dumb stuff, not least of which pertains to firearms. He’s advised people to fire shotguns through doors or off balconies, and one of his favorite and most-repeated lines that we suppose he thinks is funny is that old canard about deer wearing kevlar vests. Then there are the multiple occasions on which he’s threatened the American people with F-15s and nukes. But when the president of the United States proclaims that virtually every gun in America should be banned, Liberty-loving Patriots take notice.

“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden lamented, on Thanksgiving Day no less. “It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

He added, “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”

So the obvious question is whether Biden was just displaying his increasing senility or if he really meant what he said and is simply taking the mask off. An intrepid reporter might ask him whether any of the shotguns he owns are semiautomatic.

For what it’s worth, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “clarified” that he really just meant “assault weapons.”

“Semiautomatic” describes the vast majority of guns in the country, not just the AR-15 leftists love to demonize. “Semiautomatic” means one trigger pull, one bullet fired. Nearly all modern handguns and many if not most hunting rifles and shotguns fit in this category. Does Biden really intend to go after all of them? Does he really not understand the difference between a semiautomatic gun and a select-fire rifle — a.k.a. actual military weapons that, with the flick of a switch, can change to automatic fire? The latter are already heavily restricted to the point of being effectively illegal.

The Left has been both ignorantly and deliberately conflating the two types of guns for decades because they want to scare people into submitting to restrictions and bans.

As is usually the case with Democrats, Biden made his remarks after yet another mass shooting — this one at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, where an employee (who doesn’t fit the Left’s preferred “angry white male” profile) killed six coworkers with a pistol before killing himself. That came just days after a “non-binary” assailant (another profile breaker) murdered five people at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, and a couple of weeks after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death with no suspect even named by authorities.

The stabbings, of course, show that a mass murder can be committed without a firearm, but Democrats prefer to exploit only some murders. There have been no calls for banning knives here. Yet.

“This year, I signed the most significant gun reform in a generation, but that is not nearly enough,” Biden argued. “We must take greater action.”

Way back in March 2020, when the American people should have realized just how awful Biden really is, he had this exchange with an autoworker:

“You are actively trying to end our Second Amendment right and take away our guns,” said the man.

“You’re full of s**t,” Biden retorted. “I did not — no, no, shush. Shush. I support the Second Amendment.”

Does he?

“How exactly Biden intends to ‘get rid’ of these weapons, the vast majority of which, obviously, are owned and used by non-criminals, is anybody’s guess,” writes political analyst Teresa Mull. She then quips, “though getting your ‘sister-in-law-turned-lover’ to toss your gun in a random dumpster seems to do the trick.” Hunter Biden’s sordid story also includes felony lying on a federal background check document when purchasing a firearm.

As for Biden’s comment denying “a single solitary rationale” for owning a semiautomatic firearm, we humbly point him to the Second Amendment he claims to support. Despite years of Democrat protesting to the contrary, there is no qualification in that Amendment restricting arms to those available at the time it was written. No one makes any such argument about any other right in the Constitution — for good reason.

We don’t have to justify some “rationale” that Biden can understand before we speak or worship freely, or before we have rights protecting to our personal effects on digital devices from search or seizure. Heck, Biden and his fellow Democrats don’t even want to provide a “rationale” for killing an unborn child up until the moment of birth, and that “right” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. We certainly don’t need to satisfy his “rationale” test before owning a semiautomatic firearm.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans carrying handguns each day continues to rise. Guess what they carry? By and large, semiautomatic pistols.

(Updated)