Biden calls for gun law reform
President Joe Biden has called upon Congress to enact strict gun control regulations on the anniversary of the Parkland school shooting. Biden is demanding gun bans and new laws that will enable the victims of gun violence to sue firearms manufacturers.
“I am calling on Congress to enact common sense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets,” Biden wrote to Congress.
Biden’s call for “banning assault weapons” likely refers to a total ban on semi-automatic firearms, which would include rifles, shotguns and handguns. Additionally, Biden did not specify in his statement any language about grandfathering in the gun ownership of owners of currently permitted weapons. Effectively, under a Biden ban of semi-automatic firearms, every lawful citizen would be subject to a mandatory gun confiscation-type program.
Biden’s call to enact legislation that would open up gun manufacturers who “knowingly put weapons of war on our streets” to lawsuits functions as a roundabout way of bankrupting the weapons industry or forcing them to drastically alter the kinds of firearms they are willing to sell.
According to the Daily Wire, when the term “weapons of war” is used by gun control activists, they are generally using it to portray weapons they intend to ban as weapons that are used in “war.” This generally refers to any weapons used by members of the armed forces. However, this is inaccurate because the types of weapon gun control activists seek to bar are generally AR-15 style rifles, which may look the part, but are not actually used in war. Numerous variants of these firearms are sold by gun manufacturers in the United States as semi-automatic firearms. They are not available as fully automatic weapons, as used by the military.
Approximately one out of three Americans own a firearm, and nearly half of the country lives in a household where firearms are present. Amid the riots that took place last summer in the wake of the death of George Floyd, gun sales broke all-time records in cities across the United States.
Forbes reports that nearly five million Americans bought a firearm for the first time in 2020.
Civil unrest has served as a prime driver of gun sales during the coronavirus pandemic, as Americans buy firearms for self-protection. Federal background checks for gun purchases surged 40 per cent to a record 39.7 million in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while gunmakers Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. reported double-digit increases in sales.
According to a statistician, Leah Libresco, gun control is not the answer to reducing gun violence.
“A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible,” Libresco wrote in the Washington Post. “We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.”
Biden’s attempt to ban guns and to subvert the Second Amendment is in line with his promises on the campaign trail to do just that. At the time, Biden said that gun control activist Beto O’Rourke was “going to be the one who leads this effort.” O’Rourke, who ran a failed campaign to oust Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, has called for the confiscation of all firearms from Americans.
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