On June 11 – the day his son was convicted on three gun-related federal felony charges – Joe Biden delivered remarks on gun control at an event sponsored by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action. Much of it appeared to be simple pandering to his audience, as is often the case when he speaks. Several of the statements, however, ranged from questionable to laughable to provably false – including an implied threat to use the full force of the US military against America's gun owners.
Gun violence and gun control have rarely been winning issues for Democrats on the national stage. But Biden needs all the ammunition he can get, no pun intended, with the economy and his approval ratings in the gutter – and Donald Trump threatening an electoral repeat of 2016.
The anti-gun lobby – which includes a significant number of elected Democrats – loves to ask: Why does anybody need an assault rifle? Why does anybody need a 30-round magazine? These questions are fundamentally flawed because it's not a question of need; it's about the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. One might as well ask: Why does anybody need freedom of speech? Why does anybody need the right to a speedy trial or the right not to incriminate themselves? It seems the Second Amendment is the only constitutional right for which Americans are expected to justify.
Joe Biden Bidens Himself – Yet Again
The current occupant of the White House attempted to ask this question again, but he “Bidened” it, so to speak. He asked his audience, “Who in God's name needs a magazine that can hold 200 shells?” As anyone with firearms experience would agree, Biden's question was hilariously flawed and only demonstrated his ignorance of guns in general.
Joe Biden (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Later in the speech, Biden also implied that certain weapons available to the public have the capacity to hold 100 rounds. He recounted a story – likely another one of his tall tales – of meeting a fisherman in Delaware who stated, accusingly, “You want to take away my guns.” After allegedly telling the man that he only wanted to take away assault weapons, Biden supposedly said to him, “Guess what? If you need twelve to a hundred bullets in a gun, a magazine, you’re the lousiest shot I've ever heard of.”
The commander-in-chief continued with his foray into fantasyland, telling those gathered: “There's never been a time when it says you can own anything you want. Never. You couldn't own a cannon during the Civil War.” This is one of Biden's favorite gun control falsehoods, and he has repeated it ad nauseam. There is no historical record to back it up. The Second Amendment contains no restrictions on the type of arms the American people are allowed to keep and bear – and one most certainly could own a cannon if one could afford to purchase it.
A Gun Control Speech Out of Control
But the list of dubious claims doesn't end there. Biden asserted that gun violence is now the leading killer of children in the United States, bringing death to more children than cancer and motor vehicle accidents combined. CDC data do show that, in 2019 and 2020, gun-related injuries caused more deaths than any other single cause among Americans between one and 19 years old. It depends on how one defines “children,” however. For the same period, the leading cause of death for Americans one to 17 years old was road accidents. Moreover, the CDC numbers show that deaths from cancer and vehicle accidents combined far exceeded the number of deaths from gun-related injuries.
The president also claimed, “I've literally spoken to well over 1,000 families” that have been affected by mass shootings. It is, at the very least, highly debatable whether Biden has ever spent an amount of time with even 10% of that number of families. It would be quite a feat for any politician to have visited 100 families who had lost people to mass shootings, much less a thousand.
Fictional stories and questionable numbers aside, one of Biden's remarks should certainly have raised the hackles of every American gun owner. “And by the way,” he said, “if they wanna think [unintelligible] take on government if we get out of line – which they're talking again about – well, guess what? They need F-15s. They don't need a rifle.”
It's worth analyzing what Biden is really saying here. To begin with, the “they” to whom he refers is the tens of millions of American gun owners – and the vast majority of these people have never given any serious thought to “taking on” the government. Then there's his mention of F-15s. The clear implication here – and this is in no way taking Biden's words out of context – is that he seems comfortable with the idea of using American warplanes against American citizens on American soil should they decide to resist government abuse of power.
Dishonest, historically inaccurate, insulting to practically half of the population, and barely decipherable – that's another Joe Biden gun control speech for you. As muddled as the speech and others like it have been, however, one point certainly comes across loud and clear: There can be little doubt that Mr. Biden is perfectly comfortable with the idea of diminishing Second Amendment rights.
