Well, Ramblin' Joe Biden just announced new regulatory overreach, so it's time to dismantle some authoritarian nonsense and blatant dishonesty. Below are some key excerpts from this speech. I know many people outside the US do not understand US gun culture or gun laws, so I'll try to add some context along the way, but feel free to add questions. I'll also try to keep my minarchist dunce cap on, and not go full anarchist here. I will use the Constitution and historical context from the founding fathers.
Image via Pixabay
A year ago this week, standing here with many of you, I instructed the Attorney General to write a regulation that would would rein in the proliferation of ghost guns because I was having trouble getting anything passed in the Congress, but I used what we call “regulatory authority.” A year later, we’re here. We keep that promise.
He's bragging about completely dismantling the Constitutional framework for how laws are made. The President has no legislative authority. Neither do law enforcement agencies. This is completely outside his Constitutional authority as chief executive.
Look, the idea that someone on a terrorist list could purchase one of these guns is extreme? It isn’t extreme; it’s just basic common sense.
No, if someone has not been convicted of a crime, they are innocent until proven guilty. Secret lists do not justify infringement of rights even if those lists are completely foolproof, and there is precedent for concern.
Take a look. Take a look at this. It comes in this package. You can see the picture down here maybe. This is the gun. It’s not hard to put together. A little drill — hand drill at home. It doesn’t take very long. Anyone can order it in the mail. Anyone. And, folks, a felon, a terrorist, a domestic abuser can go from a gun kit to a gun in as little as 30 minutes.
That's a gross exaggeration. Completing an "80% kit" is easy to mess up. It requires some basic tool skills, a steady hand, and patience even with a jig to align everything.
Buyers aren’t required to pass background checks. Because guns have no serial numbers — these guns — when they show up at a crime scene, they can’t be traced. Harder to find and prove who used them. Meaning you can’t connect the gun to the shooter and hold them accountable.
They don't have serial numbers because they have not been completed. When sold, they are not functional firearms. Home-built firearms have been legal since the dawn of the country. Under current law, even after nearly a century of gun control legislation, they have never been made illegal because they are entirely in compliance with legislation as written.
Last year alone, law enforcement reported approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns to be — to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s a tenfold increase in these ghost guns from 2016. Tenfold in five years. These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals. We’re going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice and, when we find them, put them in jail for a long, long time.
"Suspected?" I suspect he's inflating the numbers by including guns with filed-off serial numbers. Stealing guns is a lot easier than building guns, after all.
Today, the United States Department of Justice is making it is illegal for a business to manufacture one of these kits without a serial number. Illegal. Illegal for a licensed dealer to sell them without a background check.
Legislation by regulation is antithetical to the principles of delegated authority and separation of powers. This is blatant overreach by executive fiat, and precisely the kind of abuse the Constitution was supposed to prevent.
And if somebody sells a ghost gun to a federally licensed dealer — for example, a pawn shop — that dealer must make the firearm and mark it with a serial number before reselling it.
It is already illegal to transfer a homemade firearm by any means other than inheritance. It's almost like he doesn't even know what the existing laws are.
First, we’re going after rogue gun dealers. The last time we had data on this was more than 20 years ago. Five percent of gun dealers sold 90 percent of illegal guns found at crime scenes. Five percent sold 90 percent.
Wait, so it's not about ghost guns all of a sudden? Also, do you know who else has been responsible for distributing guns to criminals?
[skipping a lot of tangential blather]
We need Congress to pass universal background checks. Universal background checks. And I know it’s controversial, but I got it done once: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Yes, he did, and it had no impact on crime beyond making innocent people into "criminals." As I wrote before, "[C]rime in general, and murder specifically, did decline after the ban was imposed, but this was a continuation of a downturn that began a couple years prior."
I was getting criticized when I first passed this law when I was a senator. And guess what? I was down in southern Delaware — they do a lot of hunting and fishing down there — and I was walking up one of the creek beds. And a guy standing said, “You want to take my gun?” I said, “I don’t want to take your gun.” He said, “Well, you’re telling me I can’t have more than X number of bullets in a — in a — in my gun.” And I said, “What — do you think the deer you’re hunting wear Kevlar vests? What the hell you need 20 bullets for? You must be a hell of a terrible shot.” No, I’m serious. Think about it. Think about the mass shootings. As many as a hundred rounds. It’s a weapon of war. It has nothing to do with recreation.
No, an AR15 is not a weapon of war. Actual machine guns are already effectively impossible for most people to legally acquire. But the second amendment is not about hunting, it is about the right of the people to own and carry weapons of war to defend themselves against foreign or domestic tyrants. Deer don't wear kevlar vests, but pigs do, if you catch my drift. Besides, there are many competitive shooting sports using modern rifles. He is being completely dishonest here, creating a strawman argument and ignoring the plain language of the Bill of Rights.
Eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. They’re the only outfit — they’re the only outfit in the country that is immune. Imagine had the tobacco industry been immune to prost- — to being sued. Come on. [...] Look, this is incredibly rare because gun manufacturers have more immunity from liability than any other American industry, so they have never had to take responsibility for the death and destruction their products cause.
First, has anyone heard of the vaccine industry? They are immune from liability for complications and side-effects by law, and the government has a taxpayer-funded system for restitution. This has been a concern since long before COVID-19.
Second, if a firearm company makes a defective product, they can be liable. The issue at hand is whether they are liable for crimes committed with their products. Do we sue Dell and Intel for hackers, or General Motors and Anheuser-Busch for drunk driving accidents? No, and blaming a rifle manufacturer for crimes committed with their rifles is equally absurd. The recent Remington settlement was not even a court decision, just an insurance company throwing in the towel after years of legal expenses stacking up.
And, by the way — it’s going to sound bizarre — I support the Second Amendment. You have a right. But from the very beginning, the Second Amendment didn’t say you can own any gun you want, big as you want. You couldn’t buy a cannon when, in fact, the Second Amendment passed. And certain people from the very beginning weren’t allowed to purchase guns. It’s nothing new. It’s just rational.
No, he does not support the second amendment. It says the right to own and carry weapons shall not be infringed. People did in fact own cannons. The Constitution inclides provision for letters of marque, a document which authorizes ship owners to engage in piracy and naval combat with their personal fleets as warships. The people barred from owning guns were literal slaves. His statement is historically and constitutionally false.
I'll quit here for now. That's the gist of it before he hands off to the jackass he wants to run the wholly unconstitutional ATF agency to enforce these extralegislative "laws." I'll hand off any further commentary to Brandon Herrera.
Relevant old posts:
Thoughts on Guns, Safety, and Freedom - Including Five Gun Control Rules I Support!
Constitutions Cannot Restrain Tyrants
Gun Control, Crime Rates, and Liberty
Gun Rights and False Narratives
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