President Joe Biden and his party’s backers are moving rapidly to institute sweeping gun control legislation which, if enacted, would certainly not make America safer from what he characterized as an "epidemic of gun violence" in the U.S. on the third anniversary of the tragic 2018 Parkland school shooting that left 17 people dead.
On February 14, Biden called on Congress to institute "commonsense 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."
Regarding the latter, in 2005, then-Senator Biden voted against the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that protects manufacturers from being held civilly liable for irresponsible and criminal actions by users of their products in much the same way that automakers can’t be sued for accidents caused by drunk drivers.
Gun manufactures are relatively small companies, and even the threat of such legal suits would put them out of business as obviously intended.
The "Biden Plan to End Our Gun Violence Epidemic" that appears on the Biden-Harris website goes even further as a frontal assault on Second Amendment rights.
The plan expressly states that while working to pass legislation to ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, "Biden will also use his executive authority to ban the importation of assault weapons."
As always, the term "assault weapons" is never defined, subject to a predictable series of slippery slope restrictions that include semi-automatic firearms that can be claimed to look like military weapons.
As stated, Biden will also "enact legislation to prohibit all online sales of firearms [presumably of all types] ammunition, kits, and gun parts."
And the bans won’t be limited to the supply chain manufacture, import, and sales of new guns.
"As president," the plan says, "Biden will pursue legislation to regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act."
This can fully be expected to entail classifying many semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 bullets as Class 3 weapons (which can require nine months or more for approval and a $200 fee), national gun licensing, and "red flag" laws that let judges take away people’s guns without a hearing.
"Biden," his website promises, will "direct his Attorney General to deliver to him within his first 100 days a set of recommendations for restructuring the ATF and related Justice Department agencies to most effectively enforce our gun laws."
Everyone I know supports enforcing existing gun laws. It’s Biden’s new ones that leave it open for criminalization and confiscation of any guns arbitrarily deemed illegal that are unacceptable, representing a direct assault on our Second Amendment protections.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pushed back on Joe Biden’s use of the tragic Feb. 14 Parkland high school anniversary shooting to repeal Second Amendment rights in the state.
Paxton wrote in a tweet, "The Parkland shooting 3 years ago was an act of unspeakable evil, but Democrats cannot be allowed to use this tragedy as an opportunity to cram down unhelpful and unconstitutional gun laws."
The attorney general emphasized, "Biden won’t undo the #2A [Second Amendment] in TX on my watch."
Not only are Biden Second Amendment assaults on gun ownership unconstitutional – they are also very dangerous, and most particularly for the most prevalent violent crime targets.
Economist John Lott, co-founder and former president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author of numerous academic and popular publications on the topic, argues that increased gun ownership is associated with less crime - not more.
Lott’s recent Epoch Times article "The Flawed Thinking Behind Biden’s Gun Control Bill" points out that it is poor people in the highest crime areas who benefit most from owning guns, and that rising costs resulting from making gun makers legally liable for their misuse by criminals would make them unaffordable for those individuals.
Many suburban residents and businesses are concerned about protections from lawlessness as well. We can all be reminded of the helpless plight of Mike and Pat McCloskey in St. Louis, who, after defending their home from threatening mobs, were treated by legal officials as if they were the offending criminals.
We all watched "mostly peaceful" protests (as described on mainstream media) devolve into violent and destructive arson and looting binges. We witnessed anarchist hoodlums destroy buildings, vandalize properties, and hurl objects and expletives at police in full confidence that, if arrested, they would either be quickly released without bail or not even charged.
Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, now Vice President Harris, supported those bounce-back releases.
Law-abiding gun owners are invariably among the staunchest champions of strong law enforcement – not defund police movements. Yet although police are important to fighting crime, officers virtually always arrive after the perpetrators have fled the scene.
There’s unavoidable truth in the old adage, "When seconds really count, police are only minutes away."
Police realize this, and most of them support self-defense gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. A 2016 survey conducted by the National Association of Chiefs of Police involving 15,000 chiefs and sheriffs found that 88 percent agreed that this is a good idea.
Another survey conducted in 2013 by PoliceOne’s Gun Policy & Law Enforcement organization, found that 77 percent of the 15,595 responding verified police professionals across all membership ranks and department sizes answered that legally armed citizens are extremely or very important to reducing crime rates,
Lots of first-time gun owners apparently agree as well.
As Jurgen Brauer, the chief economist for Small Arms Analytics observed, the new year "certainly started off with a sales 'bang' due to the turmoil surrounding the confirmation and inauguration of Mr. Biden as the new U.S. president."
According to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check (NCIS) data, the 4.3 million firearm background checks initiated in January were the highest number on record, and up more than 300,000 in comparison to December 2020.
Brauer noted that "The 79 percent year-over-year increase, however, was NOT unprecedented—an even higher increase, of just over 100 percent, was experienced in January 2013, the month Mr. Obama’s second presidential term began."
Let’s not give a future 2024 presidential candidate Joe Biden or Kamala Harris an opportunity to beat Obama’s second-term record as the Democrat far-left’s top gun sales representative.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 700 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "How Everything Happened, Including Us" (2020), "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.