Poor old Joe. We knock him around a lot for his advancing physical and mental infirmities. But when you get him going on a topic he really cares about — like rolling back Americans’ gun rights — it puts an extra little spring in his step. The fact that he referred to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms as the A.F.T. (twice) today is a slip-up any of us could make, right? Sure.
But you can’t put the old guy in front of a microphone for more than a minute or two before the lies and outright falsehoods begin to pour forth, drowning his audience in a fetid flow of malodorous misinformation.
In fact, the President called the United States an “international embarassment” this morning because of our ongoing “gun violence epidemic.” Yeah, it was that bad.
Make no mistake, these aren’t just instances of “mis-speaking” or exaggeration (he was reading from a TelePromter, after all). Grampy Joe stood before his audience and the cameras and lied these same lies he’s been lying over and over again for decades.
Today’s big Rose Garden announcement, which gathered many of the gun control community’s luminaries, was no exception. So while the lies were legion, for brevity’s sake, we’ll keep our list of Biden’s most bilious falsehoods to a list of the top three.
Lie Number 1
Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment. … The idea is just bizarre to think that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the constitution.
The two gun gun control measures Biden has directed the Department of Justice, through ATF rule-making, to put in place would put an and end to 80% frames and lowers that aren’t serialized. He wants the parts — or build kits that contain them — to be serialized and regulated under the Gun Control Act, requiring buyers to undergo the requisite background check.
Americans have been building their own firearms since before the Declaration of Independence. There’s literally nothing different about finishing and assembling a firearm from a build kit, or crafting your own receiver and completing a build from a range of parts bought separately.
The ATF has already defined 80% frames and lowers as non-firearms. That’s why they don’t require a background check to purchase one. Selling one as part of a build kit doesn’t make it any easier to complete one, either. So now regulating these plastic or aluminum non-guns as firearms would be a clear violation of American’s right to keep and bear arms.
As for regulating AR or AK pistols with braces attached under the National Firearm Act, that would be another bright line violation. AR and AK pistols are, just like a GLOCK 17 or a SIG P365, semiautomatic handguns. In other words they’re among the most commonly owned and used firearms in the country.
The Supreme Court’s Heller decision had something to say about commonly owned and used firearms. After noting that the Second Amendment “is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote that the right to keep and bear arms applies to “those (guns) in common use for lawful purposes.” He went on to note that a lower court ruling finding “the sorts of weapons protected (from regulation) are those ‘in common use at the time’ finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”
Again the ATF has long ago approved the use of pistol stabilizing braces. Adding one to a semi-automatic pistol — whatever the caliber — doesn’t somehow magically transform a pistol into a short barrel rifle, let alone justify regulating one as a machine gun. Trying to do so is the beginning of a process of chipping away at sales and ownership of semi-automatic firearms.
In short, by any measure, requiring Americans to undergo a background check when buying parts that are not guns, or regulating semi-automatic pistols with braces out of reach of most people, represent egregious, unconstitutional impingements on Second Amendment rights.
Lie Number 2
You walk into a store and buy a gun, you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check.
Old Joe just can’t help himself. This often-repeated lie has been employed — and debunked — by so many members of the gun control community, you’d think they’d have stopped trying to use it. But maybe the old guy figures most people have never been to a gun show and have no idea he’s really lying through his teeth.
Joe — and virtually every single person in the Rose Garden audience today — knows that the Middle East gun bazaar image that Biden described today couldn’t possibly be further from the truth. The vast majority of those selling guns at the hundreds of gun shows around the country are licensed dealers. Anyone buying a firearm from them has to undergo the same background checks they would if they walked into a brick-and-mortar store.
If that doesn’t happen, the dealer has broken the law.
Yes, it’s possible to buy a gun in a direct sale from another attendee who’s walking the aisles or from an individual collector who buys a table in order to offload a few guns, but those are clear exceptions. Biden’s “you can buy whatever you want” garbage is a blatant and disgusting lie and he (probably) knows it.
Lie Number 3
The only industry in America — a billion dollar industry — that can’t be sued, has exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers. … This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued.
Once again, this is a lie that Biden repeats over and over. No industry in America is exempt from being sued if it produces faulty or dangerous products. Ask Remington if gun makers enjoy some kind of special magic immunity from lawsuits.
In repeating this lie, Biden was referring to Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That’s the law that protects gun makers from lawfare suits by anti-gun types when the manufacturers’ lawfully-made and legally-sold products are used in the commission of a crime.
The PLCAA is a (to coin a phrase) common sense protection put in place to protect gun makers, keeping blood-sucking tort lawyers and gun control industry sharks from literally suing them into bankruptcy.
Biden knows this. He’s well aware of what repealing the PLCAA would do to gun makers. In fact, in his remarks this morning, he let this little comment slip:
If I get one thing on my list, if the Lord came down and said, ‘Joe, you get one of these,’ gimme that one (PLCAA repeal).
Nothing would make Joe Biden and every one of the gun-grabbing droogs in his Rose Garden audience happier than watching America’s firearms manufacturers sued into oblivion.