President Joe Biden held a press conference about gun control, but one part sent chills down my spine:
“Nothing I’m about to recommend in any impinges on the Second Amendment,” Biden said. “These are phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake from what we’re talking about.”Continuing, Biden said: “But no amendment to the Constitution is absolute … From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning, the Second Amendment existed certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons. So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution.”
I’ll get into the proposals in a minute, but EXCUSE ME?
“No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” Read that again. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but that is not something I want to hear out of any federal government official. The whole purpose of the Constitution is to protect our natural rights from those in government.
Thankfully, it is hard for the government to amend the Constitution. But since when do rules matter to them?
“From the very beginning.” A quick Google search shows you that the first gun restriction took place in Georgia in 1837. The legislature banned handguns, but the state’s Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. They threw out the law.
Isn’t America over 100 years old? Weird (emphasis mine):
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 places the first limitations on selling ordinary firearms. Persons selling guns are required to obtain a Federal Firearms License, at an annual cost of $1, and to maintain records of the name and address of persons to whom firearms are sold. Gun sales to persons convicted of violent felonies were prohibited.
I guess no one told Biden about District of Columbia v. Heller? The Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects a person’s natural right to bear arms even if said person is not a militia member. SCOTUS also found requirements to keep guns “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” violated the Second Amendment:
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.
DC is an enclave, so Heller did not confirm the Due Process Clause protects a person’s Second Amendment rights in the Fourteenth Amendment. That happened two years later with McDonald v. City of Chicago:
Evidence from the period immediately following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment only confirms that the right to keep and bear arms was considered fundamental. In an 1868 speech addressing the disarmament of freedmen, Representative Stevens emphasized the necessity of the right: “Disarm a community and you rob them of the means of defending life. Take away their weapons of defense and you take away the inalienable right of defending liberty.” “The fourteenth amendment, now so happily adopted, settles the whole question.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 1967. And in debating the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Congress routinely referred to the right to keep and bear arms and decried the continued disarmament of blacks in the South. See Halbrook, Freedmen 120–131. Finally, legal commentators from the period emphasized the fundamental nature of the right. See, e.g., T. Farrar, Manual of the Constitution of the United States of America §118, p. 145 (1867) (reprint 1993); J. Pomeroy, An Introduction to the Constitutional Law of the United States §239, pp. 152–153 (3d ed. 1875).—In sum, it is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.
Biden wants the Senate to “immediately pass three House-passed bills to close loopholes that allow gun purchases, purchasers, to bypass the background checks.” This includes ghost guns, which come from “kits that allow the recipient to assemble the firearm using provided parts.”
Biden wants to “ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” because he cannot find a reason why anyone needs a weapon that holds “one hundred rounds.”
I have two questions: Where can I buy this gun that holds 100 hundred rounds?! Can someone define assault weapons?!
I guess Biden wants to resurrect his awful 1994 crime bill. But Vice President Kamala Harris will love the bill:
From 1994 to 2004, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was in force. The federal law defined a “large-capacity ammunition-feeding device” as a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It made any handguns with large-capacity magazines not lawfully possessed before the law’s enactment illegal.
Quite a few states have implemented their laws banning high-capacity magazines.
Biden also wants to revoke gun manufacturers’ immunity for crimes committed by someone else with guns from that company. Yes, blame someone else.
So gross.
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