I’ve been watching Joe Biden operate in Washington, D.C., for quite some time, although not nearly as long as the half century he’s been navigating the corridors of power in our nation’s capital. And as long as I’ve been involved with defending the Second Amendment, Biden has been working to gut it.
His State of the Union (SOTU) address on March 1was just another opportunity for Joe to promote policies attacking the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
During that address, the president began by praising brave Ukrainians who had taken up arms to defend their country from Russia’s invasion. This acknowledgement of the role arms can play in the defense of liberty was in stark contrast to the gun-ban policies Biden would go on to prescribe for law-abiding Americans.
He spoke of his desire to ban some of the most commonly owned semi-automatic firearms in America, which would include the popular AR-15. He spoke of wanting to ban the magazines that come standard with many, if not most, of those firearms.
He also talked about outlawing the private transfer of guns. Apparently, Joe doesn’t trust you or me to be responsible enough to give a firearm to a relative, or sell one to a friend or neighbor we have known for decades.
And, as he has been doing for quite some time, he continued his assault on the firearm industry by again raising the specter of repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
During his SOTU address, Biden repeated his lie that the PLCAA “makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued—the only one.” This is the same lie he and other anti-gun extremists have used since the legislation that eventually established the PLCAA was first introduced. And while Congress passed the PLCAA with broad bipartisan support in 2005, Biden—who was on the losing side of that vote—and the gun-prohibitionist lobby have been pushing for repeal ever since.
Of course, you and I know the PLCAA is nothing close to what Biden describes. It merely protects the firearm industry from being sued out of existence by anti-gun extremists who wish to hold gunmakers and dealers accountable for the acts of violent criminals. It still allows for suits against the industry predicated on knowingly unlawful sales, negligent entrustment and traditional product liability grounds.
Biden has been called out for this blatant lie in the past, and a number of media outlets “fact-checked” his statement from the SOTU address and found his statement anywhere from “misleading” to “false.” All rejected the notion that “gun manufacturers … can’t be sued.” But he keeps repeating the lie.
Honestly, the SOTU address sounded like any other time the president has spoken about guns. It’s almost as if he’s just phoning it in, although you and I know he would love to go down in history as the man who cut the heart out of the Second Amendment. So far, we’ve stopped him from implementing his plan to crush our right to keep and bear arms.
For that, I’m incredibly grateful for your hard work and support.
Don’t get me wrong: He has been pushing a steady assault on our firearm freedoms since he began his presidency, and I fully expect him to continue to do so.
What has he accomplished thus far?
Last year, you’ll recall, Biden nominated a stridently anti-gun lobbyist to serve as the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The man seemed to hold as much contempt for the Second Amendment, as well as the firearms industry, as Joe. But the job of ATF Director is to work with the firearm industry, not against it. And no government employee should be working to undermine the Constitution, although I will concede that there are many who seem to do just that.
But this nomination was a slap in the face to the idea that bureaucrats should leave politics to politicians and not take sides in policy debates. Even moderate senators balked at this choice. After months of a concerted opposition campaign by NRA, members like you, and others in the pro-Second Amendment community, the nominee was pulled from consideration, and he went back to working for one of the major anti-gun lobbying organizations.
Despite the utter defeat of his chosen nominee to run ATF, some of Biden’s most-ardent anti-gun supporters during his election campaign continue to push for the White House to pursue even more restrictive gun-control policies.
Three groups—March for Our Lives, Change the Ref and Guns Down America—recently joined together to launch a website that seems designed to shame Biden into doing more to attack law-abiding gun owners. It’s called Shock Market: Tracking Gun Violence Losses Under Biden, and it appears to blame Biden’s inability to enact gun control for the current spike in violent crime involving firearms.
It doesn’t take a criminology degree to know that law-abiding gun owners aren’t responsible for America’s recent spike in violent crime. What is likely driving the violent crime increase are a number of failed policies that originated with Biden’s political party.
It started with soft-on-crime prosecutors—many of whom were elected to office after receiving millions in campaign dollars from anti-gun billionaire George Soros— who are working to dramatically change how crime is viewed by their offices. Not only do they regularly fail to prosecute violent criminals, but many have promoted—and implemented—policies that change a number of serious felonies into misdemeanors.
Then there was the “response” to the COVID-19 pandemic in some areas, where countless violent criminals were simply released from prison, along with many individuals facing charges for serious violent offenses. And let’s not forget the anti-law-and-order rhetoric of the “defund-the-police” movement.
Even when perpetrators are caught, and a prosecution follows, some jurisdictions have virtually eliminated any form of bail, so that even violent, repeat offenders find themselves walking our streets sometimes mere hours after being caught breaking the law.
Perhaps the most revolting example of this practice took place in the New York City subway in late February.
Police reported that a 43-year-old woman, sitting on a bench in a subway station in the Bronx, was approached by a man carrying a plastic bag filled with human excrement, which he pushed into the woman’s face. An account from the New York Post stated that the man “smashed the vile contents of the bag in her face, and then smeared it on the back of her head.”
As disgusting as that sounds, it gets worse.
The man was arrested, and in spite of the fact that the entire assault was caught on video, and in spite of the fact that the man had 44 prior arrests, and in spite of the fact that some of those arrests involved violent assaults, and in spite of the fact that the man swore at the judge while being arraigned (and also referred to both the judge and victim as “b---h”), the man was released without bail!
Then, two days later, this same man was arrested on hate-crime charges stemming from an anti-Semitic assault last September and was again released without bail!
Is it any wonder that, when our criminal-justice system treats violent offenders with kid gloves, violent offenders continue to act violently towards the rest of society?
And before you dismiss this particular case as simply anecdotal, please know that studies indicate that violent crime, especially violent crime involving firearms, is often perpetrated by a small portion of the population that is already known to law enforcement.
Different studies have looked at crime in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., and they indicate most violent crime in those cities tends to be isolated in specific areas of the city and committed by a small, known group of individuals. As one study noted, “It’s a tiny handful of the community that’s responsible for the lion’s share of the bloodshed.”
In other words, the police tend to know who the bad actors are and where they operate. How about politicians and prosecutors start focusing on them, rather than trying to blame law-abiding gun owners and implementing gun-control laws that will have no impact on crime?
Rather than continuing his legacy of blaming the Second Amendment, law-abiding gun owners and the lawful firearms industry, Biden should have used the bully pulpit of the presidency to promote effective responses like targeting criminals and ensuring that they’re unable continue to victimize the American people.
But, Biden is who he is. His SOTU address is what I expected, as you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so I expect more of the same in the future.
I’ll keep fighting against his anti-gun agenda, and I know you’ll be there with me, as we get ready for the midterm elections this November. We need to be sure we succeed in electing pro-gun majorities in both chambers of Congress, or we will see a revitalized push for gun control from Biden next year.
