What Is Biden Doing with the Second Amendment?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the Second Amendment: “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.”

            Democrats and the Biden administration do not understand the meaning of this amendment because they do not understand the meaning of the individual words. Shall means that something will happen, not might happen. Keep and bear arms means that Americans have the right to own guns and to carry them.

            Biden is intent on changing the meaning of the Second Amendment or taking away this guaranteed freedom. He recently gave a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to tout his “Safer America Plan” and a gun control bill that he signed into law. Amy Swearer listed what she considers to be the “top 5 most unserious things Biden said about guns and the Second Amendment” in his August 30, 2022, speech. 

1. “Right now you can’t go on [sic] and buy an automatic weapon. You can’t go out and buy a cannon.”

Biden has made some variation of this assertion numerous times since taking office as president, and every time it has been roundly debunked by fact-checkers.

Private cannon ownership apparently was so widespread that one of the first types of “gun control” laws implemented in the early 1800s by some towns was a prohibition on firing one’s cannon inside city limits during certain times or without permission.

Today, it’s still not uncommon for civilians to own heavy ordnance, including 18ty-century cannons and their modern equivalents. In fact, civilians even may buy tanks and other tactical military vehicles if they can afford the steep price tags….

It’s also simply not true that civilians can’t legally buy machine guns today. These firearms are subject to special taxing and registration provisions under the National Firearms Act, and the Firearm Owners Protection Act prohibits civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after 1986. Nevertheless, over 700,000 of them currently are registered to American civilians.

2. “Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun, five times lighter and can pierce Kevlar?”

A simple internet search by an intern could have told the president that this statement about an AR-15’s muzzle velocity and weight was laughably false.

Although a .223/5.56 bullet – the most common caliber for an AR-15 platform – is certainly among the lighter and faster of rifle rounds, it’s not even close to the lightest or fastest, much less five times faster or lighter….

As for Biden’s claim that rounds fired from an AR-15 can “pierce Kevlar,” this is true of almost all common rifle calibers against soft body armor, which is not typically graded to stop rifle rounds.

3. “For God sake [sic], what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone? They inflict severe damage … the AR-15 just rips the body apart.”

Biden can’t really believe that AR-15s are solely useful for combat. If he did, he and other gun control advocates wouldn’t universally exempt law enforcement officers from these bans (including while the officers are off duty).

In the United States, law enforcement officers aren’t waging offensive warfare or engaging in open combat on a battlefield. Instead, they are peace officers, responding to common criminal threats in a civilian context. They routinely carry AR-15s precisely because these guns are genuinely useful for a wide variety of lawful civilian purposes….

4. “For those brave right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15 … You need something more than a gun.”

This is an odd assertion for the president to make after dedicating so much time to the mutually exclusive argument that AR-15s are ultra-deadly weapons of war and useful only for combat purposes.

Either the gun is a useless hunk of carbon fiber without any value in a hypothetical armed defense against a tyrant’s military forces, or it is a war zone weapon that should be limited to the battlefield. It cannot be both at the same time.

More importantly, Biden’s argument misunderstands how any large-scale armed defense against a tyrannical government or foreign invader would unfold and underappreciates the role of federalism in ensuring a far more adequate response to such a scenario.

The Framers well understood that an armed but disorganized citizenry alone might struggle against a large standing army under the control of a tyrannical central power. This is precisely why every state has its own organized militia unit, in the form of its State Guard and National Guard units.

Any hypothetical large-scale revolt against a tyrannical federal government almost certainly would involve these well-trained and well-equipped state organized militias – including their fighter jets, tanks, anti-aircraft weapons, and special operations forces….

5. “There are certain gun dealers that are basically … not gun dealers, they’re wholesalers providing the weapons to anybody who has the money.”

Is Biden alleging that these “gun dealers” are breaking federal laws, either by failing to obtain a Federal Firearms License or by failing to abide by laws requiring such licensees to conduct background checks on firearm purchasers?

If so, the president, as chief executive, should direct federal law enforcement agencies to do their jobs, investigate this alleged criminal noncompliance, and ensure these criminals are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law….

By definition, if these transactions are conducted lawfully, the prospective buyer passed a federal background and took possession of a firearm that he was permitted to own under all relevant state laws….

            Anyone who has listened to any of Biden’s speeches knows that he is unserious president. He may believe the things that he says, but his reason for saying the things that he does is that he must keep his left-wing base. If he does not say the things that they want, they may leave him without any supporters.