By Alan M. Rice
Joe Biden has been running for president for 32 years. Longtime advocates of the right to bear arms may remember that Joe Biden has run twice before, in 1988 and 2008. And if he is elected this year, he will be 78 years old on inauguration day – making him the oldest president to ever be sworn in. Thus, Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate matters as much or more than the presidential candidate himself.
I won’t mince words. This is by far, the most anti-gun, anti-America, anti-freedom ticket in history.
Joe Biden has a long, well known record of not only voting for — but sponsoring — one anti-gun bill after another. On the campaign trail, he boasts about being a sponsor of the now-sunsetted 1994 Biden/Clinton/Gore firearm and magazine ban. And he has vowed to reenact such a ban if he were to be elected president — a ban that will force gun owners to pay a tax and register any “pre-ban” guns they wish to keep and will not have a sunset provision. To be sure, in 1995, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said:
“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an out right ban, picking up every one of them. . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ’em all in,” I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren’t here.”
The Biden/Harris campaign has vowed to pursue gun confiscation.
He also wants to enact a “one-handgun-a-month” law (gun rationing, which will surely expand to rifles and shotguns and become one firearm per month); enforce “universal background checks” (sell or give a gun to a friend, family member or neighbor and you could go to jail); and incentivize states to pass “red flag” gun confiscation laws (no due process) which is wholly inconsistent with over 200 years of American jurisprudence.
And that’s only the beginning.
If Joe Biden wins the election, we will be facing every sort of European socialist type of gun control, the magnitude of which will only be limited by the imaginations of the leftists who he will pack his cabinet with. Leftist ideologues such as Robert Frances O’Rourke who, as a candidate, promised to confiscate American citizens lawfully owned firearms.
Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris said during the primary election that: “Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws, and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action…”
We don’t know exactly what Sen. Harris means by “executive action,” but it can’t be good for those of us who strongly and unequivocally support Second Amendment rights.
Sen. Harris is on record as an advocate for repeal of the Protection in Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This is a 2005 law that was enacted because big city mayors (in collaboration with the plaintiffs bar) were suing gun manufacturers for the criminal abuse of their lawfully produced products. The PLCAA was enacted to prevent legitimate businesses that are selling a legal product from being forced into bankruptcy for the actions of criminals. Gun makers cannot — or will not — control criminals who steal guns and harm others.
Gun manufacturers are federally licensed, and they only sell to federally licensed gun dealers. Even if a gun maker wins a lawsuit, they lose because of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that must be spent on attorneys and experts to defend their legitimate business. It is an abuse of the court system to allow such suits to proceed, given that a gun manufacturer or dealer was not responsible for the criminal conduct that was committed with their legal product.
The ultimate goal of a Biden/Harris administration is to ban guns (or make them prohibitively expensive) by suing into bankruptcy those who legally produce and sell them.
Kamala Harris hates guns and those who own them. She clearly does not believe that law-abiding citizens should have a right to carry them for self defense, much less own them. When she was Attorney General of California, she fought to preserve California’s “good cause” requirement for the issuance of a license. This “requirement” is what prevents many honest, law-abiding gun owners from obtaining concealed carry licenses and being able to take responsibility for their own safety. Sen. Harris does not like self-reliant Americans.
You can be sure that in a Biden / Harris administration, nationwide concealed carry (HR 38) will never be enacted. In fact, none of the pro-gun reforms that GOA has been pushing will be enacted — such as deregulating short barrel rifles, which has taken on a sense of urgency because ATF is now working to outlaw pistol braces.
And just when you thought that it couldn’t get worse, you can be certain that a Biden/Harris Administration will happily push for all the radical gun control that other Democrats talked about during the campaign, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax handguns at 30% and ammunition at 50%. Or Sen. Corey Booker’s plan to create a federal gun licensing scheme similar to the one in his home (anti-gun) state of New Jersey.
Democrats are also salivating at the prospect of taking control of the Senate and retaining control of the House of Representatives. If they get the Senate, they will, within the first 90 days, get rid of the filibuster (so the minority will not have a voice) and make Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia states with full representation in Congress. If that happens, freedom will be lost — possibly forever.
These changes will make it virtually impossible for the Republican Party to regain control of the Congress, and if the Democrats actually carry out their threat to end the Electoral College, Donald Trump could very well be the last Republican president.
After former Vice President Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, Democrats muted their support for gun control. Fast forward 20 years and the muzzles are off. They have told us — loudly and clearly — exactly what they will do if they win the election. Now it’s our responsibility to deny them the opportunity.
The above scenarios are not fear mongering. These are the assessments made by GOA’s leadership which, together, has over 100 years of experience in the area of public policy and Second Amendment advocacy.
So please, on November 3, remember to vote your guns and vote your freedom. Together we can make sure that the Biden/Harris Campaign becomes a footnote of history rather than a presidential administration.
Allan M. Rice is a firearms instructor and spokesman for Gun Owners of America.