Biden’s Gun Executive Order Literally Doesn’t Change Anything
He’s just posturing. It doesn’t change policy or laws.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order on guns.
Lefty websites make you think he’s taking a stance against those assault rifles! Other websites make you think he’s coming from your guns.
The executive order literally does nothing. Buried in The New York Post (emphasis mine):
Biden’s executive order does not make policy changes but calls on executive agencies to ensure compliance with existing laws, moving the US as close to universal background checks as possible under existing laws without requiring Congress to pass additional legislation.
My friend responded, “So it’s the equivalent of shaking his fist and saying, ‘You better do your job!'”
Yup.
Buried in The Associated Press article:
Tuesday’s action does not change U.S. government policy. Rather, it directs federal agencies to ensure compliance with existing laws and procedures — a typical feature of executive orders issued by presidents when they confront the limits of their own power to act without cooperation from Congress.
So America will have more background checks by people actually doing what they’re supposed to do.
Biden made demands of Attorney General Merrick Garland, but it’s just to clarify the laws we already have on the books:
Biden also asked Garland to formulate a plan to stop firearms dealers whose federal licenses have been revoked or surrendered from selling guns.
The order also directs Garland, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the secretary of education and the surgeon general to raise public awareness of “red flag” orders, which allow a judge to remove a firearm from someone deemed likely to hurt themselves or others.
Further, Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to issue a public report on how gun makers market firearms to minors and how the manufacturers use military imagery to advertise weapons to the general public.
The media wants to get you riled up and in turn they bury the lede.
Biden didn’t do anything concerning guns. Nothing changed. Nothing will change. He’s just posturing.
Also, LOL.
BIDEN: "My executive order directs my Attorney General to take every lawful action possib— *BURP* —possible to move us as close as we can to universal background checks without new legislation." pic.twitter.com/m7kCwBYXMJ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 14, 2023
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Comments
“Rather, it directs federal agencies to ensure compliance with existing laws and procedures.”
You’ll be forgiven if you think the Bruen decision is included among the “existing laws.”
Phhhhtttt!
The presidential (?) bloviator talking more useless smack.
Wake me up when the Federales do anything, ANYTHING, with all of the killing in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and every other Democratic Party enclave hell bent on killing people.
Darth Biden, the guy with a Marxist puppet master with a hand up his asscrack, trying to break bad.
There’s a weird directive in there that seems to instruct the military to buy up more small arms so that there will be fewer for civilians. See Not The Bee.
But as they say in the doritos commercial, “We’ll make more”.
Law of supply and demand, anyone?
They’re already more expensive. Bleh.
No, I think that bit means the military should impose requirements on contractors, i..e. it should announce that it won’t buy weapons from companies that do things it doesn’t like, such as selling AR-15s to civilians. Exercise your constitutional rights, give up your chance at military contracts. But the courts tend to take a dim view of that sort of thing.
Yeah, upon re-reading that excruciatingly vague language, that makes more sense.
Although there is the precedent of the government hoovering up all the ammo during Obama.
Yeah, that’s one that is “something new” and is illegal and un-constitutional.
I don’t know. It’s not exactly illegal or unconstitutional. One can argue both sides of the question. But it’s definitely sleazy, and as I said, the courts tend to take a dim view of it.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal because of existing contract law for government acquisition. (I work in the area of contracting.) Among other things, I think current contracting law pretty well states what are and are not acceptable criteria for accepting bids.
But I am open to words from folks more into acquisition law.
If it’s being done for the purpose of denying the people their rights to keep & bear arms and to legally acquire property (firearms are property, and should be subject all of the rights and privileges associated with other forms of property), then the action is unconstitutional. SCOTUS says the letter of the law is not the only consideration that matters. Intent matters as well. An act done by government towards an unconstitutional end is unconstitutional. This is the very definition of an “act conducted under color of law.” No lawful (constitutional) statute allows any unconstitutional act.
This is just throwing dog treats to the gun control folks who are about to take some massive L’s in the coming weeks with cases in California and possibly the ruling on Maryland’s Assault Weapons Ban in the 4th Circuit.
How ’bout a red flag for an 80 year old dementia struck Commander in Chief who is clearly not with all the necessary facilities? We are all in eminent danger!
Thing is there’s been a “red flag” law for that for quite a while now, called the 25th Amendment.
Problem is the same with other laws about crazy people – someone has to be willing to, *ahem*, pull the trigger.
Weird. I can’t believe he wants Hunter to go to jail like that.
So Biden flies to California to issue his statement about gun control in a state that had a shooting with stricter laws than he is reaffirming at the federal level. Guns control, ammunition background checks in the PDRK. This while the FBI has been shown to have dropped the ball thousands of times on those background checks. Once again to fool the people that something is being done… another in the long series of “first steps” in “common sense” legislation. Of course, the shooting was Asian on Asian…. I guess in the broader scheme… white supremacy.
When it includes competing groups on the Intersectionality Scale, it is no longer White Supremacy. It becomes
THE PATRIARCHY!!!!!!!!!
Actually they won’t, because everyone who’s supposed to have a background check already has one now. There is no evidence of any licensed dealer failing to run the checks, or of anyone who should be a licensed dealer not being one.
But that’s not the law, so Garland can’t do that. You don’t need a license to sell guns. You only need one to be in the business of buying and selling them for a living. Former dealers are allowed to sell off their remaining stock, as well as their private collections, after closing up shop and giving up their license. And of course they’re allowed to buy new guns, and to sell old ones they no longer need, just like anyone else. So long as it’s a hobby, not a business.
And the definition of who exactly needs a license is fixed in the language of the law, so Garland can’t “clarify” it.
“There is no evidence of … anyone who should be a licensed dealer not being one.”
But all that can change with the stroke of a pen, and has, several times.
But he can’t have it both ways. If people loses their licenses because they’re hobbyists, then by definition they don’t have to run background checks.
Their licenses won’t get pulled for being a hobbyist. The ratchet doesn’t go that way. They will lose their license for something else, and then ATF will try and crack down on them selling anything because they no longer have a license.
Or, as I think henrybowman was pointing out, they have before fiddled with application of the rules such that people who were pretty clearly hobbyists were suddenly faced with prosecution for selling without a license.
(There have also been people rightly prosecuted for basically being a dealer but trying to fly under the flag of a “hobbyist”.)
That’s not what the link says. On the contrary, it says that a bunch of people lost their licenses because they were classed as hobbyists and therefore didn’t need one. Then 0bama said they were going to make sure actual dealers had a license even if they were low-volume. Genuine hobbyists would of course remain exempt. That was made very clear at the time. As far as I know nobody was prosecuted or was even “suddenly faced with prosecution”. There was no change in the underlying law, so they couldn’t be.
henrybowman in reply to Milhouse. | March 14, 2023 at 11:54 pm
“There is no evidence of … anyone who should be a licensed dealer not being one.”
Um, aside from the occasional ATF(E, and really big fires, and gun-running) task force.
But that’s not the law, so Garland can’t do that.
Arguably, there’s already things he’s doing that he “can’t”. In the case of exceeding the law, the EO might give him cover for trying something. This admin is notorious for “Oh? We can’t do that? Oh well” after they’ve already done damage.
Good point. The ATF decided to make millions of law-abiding gun owners into felons with the ‘pistol brace’ rule change, so they would not mind shading current process a bit to add a few million more. The Left is good about getting immediate judicial holds on things they don’t like, but conservatives tend to the “We’ll deal with it in court in three years or more, just tolerate until then.”
That ain’t gonna fly in the current environment.
Didn’t the courts stop that PDQ?
Something must be amiss if lefty sites are crowing about this. The marxist scum would eat him alive if they thought he wasn’t being sufficiently dictatorial. They’re done carrying water for this demented fool so there must be more to the story.
No, they’re crowing because they’re desperate for any kind of achievement. They’re losing on all fronts, so anything that can be spun to look like an advance is welcome. It’s like Russia and the Ukraine each puffing up every story that they can possibly spin as an advance for their side.
Lefties, including most politicians, know so little about guns and the laws already on the books, that Biden can get away with saying just about anything regarding gun laws and they will believe him.
Universal background checks have little to do with checking backgrounds but everything to do with establishing a national gun registry in everything but name.
The two things are related, and it’s very suspicious, but so far there’s no actual evidence to support what we all suspect. Records of background checks are supposed to be destroyed after six months; they were recently caught not doing so, but that has (as far as we know) now been corrected. Vigilance is certainly required, and the whole system needs proper scrutiny, but to make a bald statement as you did goes too far. It may turn out to be true, but it goes beyond what the known facts will support.
What the congressional Republicans should do is hold hearings demanding to know why, with so many people failing background checks, none of them is ever prosecuted. That’s a very suspicious datum. Why have the Dems never even tried prosecuting someone for illegally attempting to purchase a weapon, as evidenced by their failing the required background check? They should be put on the spot and compelled to come up with an answer, any answer. It won’t be the truth, but it should be useful to hear what they come up with.
What I suspect the true answer is, is that almost all of the failed checks are false positives, and re-running the check gets the person a pass to buy the weapon, and they don’t want that coming out so they never prosecute.
Macbeth says, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
That seems to be coming up a lot recently, doesn’t it?
All of this gun stuff is aimed at soft Republicans hoping they will jump sides under pressure.
Red Flag laws seem to start with the idea that you can infringe on someone’s constitutional right just because someone thinks it’s a good idea.
Proponents will say that they’ll only disarm extremists. Remember that this claim is likely made by those who wanted parents at school board meetings to be declared domestic terrorists.
As for claims that due process rights are protected, it’s hard to see due process when someone on the receiving end has done nothing wrong. If they’ve done something wrong, there are already constitutionally sound ways to restrain them. And remind the proponents that the due process protections don’t kick in until after the SWAT team has raided your home, taken your guns, and deprived you of your 2nd amendment rights, all by force and at gun point.
In order to get your guns back, you’ll end up spending thousands of dollars on lawyers to prove the negative that you don’t pose a threat to anyone.
All because maybe a neighbor wet themselves when you carried a gun case into your house, or an ex-girlfriend got mad because she didn’t get custody of the dog when you broke up.
And if they can do it with the second amendment, what’s to stop them expanding the practice to the first or the fourth or even the thirteenth amendment?
We should remind people of this as often as possible:
The words “due process” have a precise technical import, and are only applicable to the process and proceedings of courts of justice; they can never be referred to an act of the legislature.
Alexander Hamilton
“Red Flag laws seem to start with the idea that you can infringe on someone’s constitutional right just because someone thinks it’s a good idea.”
And they continue with the establishment of secret proceedings of which the gun owner is not informed and therefore has no right or opportunity to defend themselves.
First notification might be, in fact is likely to be, the crash as your front door is taken off its hinges in a no-knock raid.
Or perhaps the quiet, officious man who seems harmless knocking on your door and politely requesting some information. With whom many law-abiding people cooperate.
Followed by the more threatening officious man in a uniform telling you that you have to let him in or it will go badly for you.
It doesn’t always have to be no-knock raids to be very, very wrong.
The pro-gun folks have been harping on “enforce the damn laws already there” forever. They’ve had a good messaging operation, too. They may make some proper hay out of this. Not the NRA — they’re idiots and tools.
Let’s have a few more anti-gun personalities go pick one up at Wally World, easier than getting tooth paste. On camera. Without edits.
He is so dreamy when he uses the bully pulpit.