Biden Admin Hides Stats, Wants to Ban 'Assault Rifles'

President Joe Biden is pulling out all the stops to promote a ban on the most popular modern sporting rifle in the United States, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is doing its part to cover for him.

It’s hiding its own data on defensive gun use — the rationale behind the Second Amendment. Additionally, a ban on so-called “assault rifles” would be overreaching and do nothing to curb gun violence.

The Reload editor’s Stephen Gutowski, released a damning report yesterday revealing that the CDC bowed to pressure from gun control advocates and scrubbed its data on defensive gun use.

At issue were findings compiled by criminologist Gary Kleck indicating that there are as many as 2.5 million instances of defensive gun uses per year.

The CDC granted an audience to Gun Violence Archive co-founder Mark Bryant, through introductions made by the White House and Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and gun control proponent.

Bryant reportedly wrote to the CDC after their meeting that "that 2.5 million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,"

However, Kleck’s estimate confirms earlier research that the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council released through the CDC in June 2013.

It found that "almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year."

But the Biden White House and gun control groups want to hide that data from Americans in an effort to ban AR-style rifles, a pledge he has made throughout his career.

But enacting a standalone ban on such weapons would be an uphill battle for the president and his supporters, according to Alan Gottlieb.

Gottlieb founded and is the executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, a national non-profit organization based in Bellevue, Washington.

“As a standalone, I don’t think you could get 10 Republicans to agree, and frankly they’re going to lose one Democrat for sure,” Gottlieb told Newsmax, referring to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. “He’ll never go for a ban. So my concern is an amendment to something everyone wants to get passed before the end of the year.”

Beginning with the next Congress, a so-called “assault rifle” ban would be more problematic for Democrats when they lose control of the House.

If Democrats fail to get such a ban passed by the end of this Congress, there are still actions that Biden can take on his own via executive order.

This would especially be possible with imports. “Trade laws give him more latitude,” Gottlieb explained.

Many AR-style rifles are imported by, for example, Walther, Sig Sauer and Heckler & Koch.

“And so he could ban imports of guns and certain calibers of ammunition that these guns use, and as you know we have an ammunition shortage to begin with,” he said.

However, the sheer number of AR-style rifles works against an outright ban.

District of Columbia vs. Heller was a 2008 Supreme Court case holding that the Second Amendment protects the possession of weapons “in common use at the time.”

AR-style rifles are perhaps the most common sporting rifle in use today. Business Insider reported that as of May there were about 20 million such weapons in the United States.

“We have a number of court cases right now in various jurisdictions where they ban so-called ‘assault rifles,’ where they make all kinds of arguments that they’re not really in common use,” Gottlieb said.

The Second Amendment Foundation challenged the constitutionality of California’s “assault weapon” ban, based, in large part, on the Heller decision. U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez agreed and declared the state’s statutes regarding such firearms unconstitutional.

Former President Bill Clinton signed a bill into law that banned so-called “assault rifles” from September 1994 to September 2004, with an aim toward reducing mass shootings in the United States.

It did nothing. Throughout its 10-year ban there were 15 mass shootings.

Nonetheless, Biden and gun control advocates will continue decrying the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court, and the private ownership of AR-style rifles. And they won’t be above telling public agencies like the CDC to lie by omission on their behalf.

Gottlieb released a statement in celebration of Bill of Rights Day this week

“The first ten amendments to our Constitution protect individual rights — including the right to keep and bear arms — from government overreach and infringement,” he said. “That is the way the Founders designed it, and that is the way it must always remain.”

And so long as the Supreme Court remains faithful to the Constitution, those rights will remain protected.