Biden’s War on Guns Part II: No Love for Liberty on the Left

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part analysis of Joe Biden’s Plan to End Our Gun Violence Epidemic. In part one, we examined the misleading “facts” presented in the plan, from actual gun violence statistics to Biden’s previous “accomplishments.” In this final part, we’ll see what Biden plans to do about the so-called gun violence epidemic should he manage to win the White House. When the Founding Fathers established the various protections of liberty in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they envisioned a nation in which citizens had the autonomy and ability to defend their own lives and liberties, as well as that of their families and communities. It was clear to the Founders that no freedoms could survive absent an armed society to protect them. As such, the very idea of gun control defies good sense – often mistakenly called “common sense.” Yet it is this appeal to common sense that tyrants throughout history have used to first disarm and then enslave the people they were tasked with serving. Let’s be clear: There is no such thing as gun-control legislation that respects the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – or, for that matter, the principle of individual liberty. In the previous installment, we transitioned to the conclusion by quoting the passage in Biden’s plan on what he plans to do moving forward. It seems only right to begin this analysis with the same quote:

“It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited. As president, Biden will pursue constitutional, common-sense gun safety policies.”

In case anyone reading this has forgotten, the Second Amendment states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Now, let’s see how Biden plans to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms while still respecting the Second Amendment. Spoiler alert: He doesn’t, and he can’t.

Pass the Blame

The first order of business for President Joe Biden would be to make gun manufacturers accountable for the dangers that come from using their products. Well, there’s good news here: They already are. If your firearm discharges and drives a bullet into a body without the trigger having been pulled, you are free to sue the manufacturer of your weapon for that malfunction. But that’s not what Biden and the Democrats want. They want to be able to sue gun makers out of business – or at least out of selling to civilians – when other people misuse the products. What other industry must stand under this Sword of Damocles? Can you sue Random House if someone accosts you in a library with a hardback? What about Stanley or Craftsman? Are they held liable whenever a violent criminal opts for a screwdriver? Yet the Biden campaign wants you to believe that firearms manufacturers are untouchable and unaccountable for their products. There’s no other industry that enjoys such a protection, the plan declares. Evidently, the authors of this particular piece of propaganda have forgotten – or perhaps they hope you have forgotten – about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1988. As Liberty Nation’s Pennel Bird explained:

“[I]n 1986, beset by scores of costly vaccine injury lawsuits, pharmaceutical companies effectively blackmailed the federal government. Acting in concert, they asserted they would no longer manufacture vaccines if they were to be held liable for revenue-killing vaccine injuries and deaths – and the government relented. “In 1988, President Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) into law. This watershed action shielded pharmaceutical companies, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and all other health care professionals administering vaccines from any liability whatsoever for vaccine injury and death, conferring on them total indemnity from lawsuits. This was a unique carve-out in American history, never before established and never since repeated.”

Biden’s Big Ban Hammer

To fully dissect all of Biden’s misleading facts and promises would take many thousands of words and a great deal of free time in which to read them. Suffice to say that Biden boasts of his previous success with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, but – as with everything else in this anti-gun manifesto – his claims are merely misdirection. Biden wants to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Those who want to keep their “assault weapon” must register it with the ATF under the National Firearms Act (NFA). Assault weapon, as Liberty Nation Legal Affairs Editor Scott D. Cosenza often points out, is just another way of saying most semiautomatic rifles and numerous pistols. For those who might not realize that AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle – 15 Rounds per Second, assault weapon is just a political term made up by the anti-gun folks – though it might be more accurate to call them the anti-armed-citizen folks. It sounds really close to assault rifle or battle rifle – both of which are military weapons (note I did not say “military style weapons,” as the Democrats often do) that can be fired in either fully automatic or burst modes. This makes regular semiautomatic guns sound scary to those who don’t know any better. So what would an assault weapons ban mean for the right to bear arms? Cosenza explains:

“Currently, the federal portion of a gun background check – for normal guns like AR-15’s or Glock 17’s –  includes running the buyer’s name through electronic databases of prohibited persons. This is called an ‘instant’ check, and while there are delays, results usually come back in minutes. NFA or Class 3 firearms are machineguns. There are some other types included, but for the most part, we are talking about fully automatic firearms which shoot continuously with a single trigger pull. “To complete the lengthy NFA application, people have to submit photos and fingerprints, along with a $200 fee! The icing on the cake? It now takes the staff of ATF about one year to process a Class 3 transfer. It’s hard to imagine such hurdles to regular gun ownership being considered permissible under the Supreme Court’s precedents. They have held the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental one, and these laws erect substantial hurdles to the exercise of that right.”

The former vice president also has an issue with what he calls high-capacity magazines – that is, any magazine that can hold more than ten rounds. For a prime example of an asinine argument, look no further than the opening statement for Biden’s magazine ban: “Federal law prevents hunters from hunting migratory game birds with more than three shells in their shotgun. That means our federal law does more to protect ducks than children.” It is, perhaps, sad that I feel a need to explain this one, but here goes: Hunting regulations are in place to protect game animals from over hunting or unethical hunting practices – all while allowing the hunter to hunt those animals. Now, if you still can’t see the not-so-subtle difference here, just call the FBI and inform them that you’re looking to go hunt some human children and ask how many shells you can have loaded in your shotgun. I assure you they will clear up any remaining ambiguity as to whether federal law allows the shooting of another person for sport or food – child or otherwise.

Disarming the Dangerous – Only Not

Biden’s plan moves from banning items to prohibiting people. He speaks of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, yet there is no mention of disarming the government. Instead, he would violate the principle – if not the letter – of the Second Amendment. How? Let us consider why the right to bear arms is so sacred to the idea of liberty. In the Declaration of Independence, it is explained that the Creator has endowed us all with certain rights that cannot be taken away. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Second Amendment exists so that our government can never have the power to take away the right to protect both life and liberty. And it worked – for about 143 years. The problem with restricting the types of arms a person can use is that, to defend against government tyranny, the people must have access to the same level of weapons technology as the military. As for prohibited people, the restriction enforced – thanks to the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), 207 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, which established a group of prohibited persons  – says that anyone in that group is no longer considered a person. Remember the Declaration? If everyone is endowed by the Creator with these rights, then either those who aren’t allowed to bear arms are something other than people, or the government is in defiance of both natural law and the U.S. Constitution. Regardless of what anyone has done in the past, so long as they’re free to roam society, they are – or should be – free to be armed for self-defense. It doesn’t matter if the person in question has a criminal history and self-identifies as Batman, any individual who isn’t currently incarcerated or held in some state institution has the right to keep and bear arms. What is the answer to the question: “But what if that nut attacks me?” Simple: Be at all times armed and ready to defend yourself and your family. That is, according to our Founders, not only your right but also your duty.

Want Some Icing on That Cake?

Even if it were constitutional and ethical to ban certain weapons and prohibit groups of people from owning firearms, where do we draw the line? The problem with the progressive nature of the left is that those who drive it ever forward are perfectly willing to take their wins in small increments. Yesterday, it was common sense that felons shouldn’t have guns – never mind fully automatic guns. Today, it’s just common sense that semiautomatic weapons join the NFA list and that all private transactions go through the same background checks mandated to federally licensed dealers by the GCA. Of course, they will have to ban the online sale of firearms, gun-building kits, and ammo – but don’t worry, that’s in the plan as well. Biden and the Democrats also want to extend that list of prohibited persons to anyone with a history of mental illness, violent or otherwise. They want to toss out due process entirely and allow “extreme risk” laws, which permit people to be disarmed by the police without even a criminal charge – forget about conviction! The left wants to set up a gun-licensing program so that, in order to buy a gun, one must first obtain a license. Then there’s the registry. Yes, Biden and the Democrats want every privately owned gun to be registered. Here’s a little history on gun registries. While the left loves to label Trump “literally Hitler,” it was Hitler and his Nazi regime that established a gun registry so that any time a crime was committed with a gun, the owner of the weapon (and, therefore, ostensibly the criminal) could be easily tracked down. This would save lives, they said – just as the Democrats say it will today. But it didn’t. It wasn’t enough. So the next step for the Nazis was to collect those registered firearms. All of them. That is, a complete disarming of the people. Now, I’m not one to point out political opponents and label them the next Hitler. Biden simply doesn’t have the body count for that – and neither does any other candidate currently on the ballot. But if you don’t think a fully disarmed populace isn’t the final goal for the American left, then I have a beautiful beach house for sale on Nebraska’s lovely Pacific coastline you might be interested in. There are so many more issues with Biden’s plan to end the imaginary gun violence epidemic, but we simply can’t unpack each one in a single document. Rather, read the plan for yourself – and answer this question: Can you trust your liberty and your security to the left? ~ Read more from James Fite.