Within the “Gun Safety” section of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign website, Biden states that if elected he would: “Put America on the path to ensuring that 100% of firearms sold in America are smart guns….”
So Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive 2020 nominee for president, is vowing in print to do all he can to institute a plan to make so-called “smart guns” the only choice for American gun owners. If he is elected to be the 46th President of the United States, that is.
The “smart-gun” theory, frequently bandied around by gun-control advocates, is that such high-tech firearms could only be used by specific people. This would mean, these advocates would have you believe, that unauthorized individuals wouldn’t be able to pick up and fire such guns.
While that science-fiction argument has some theoretical merits, it is also impractical, expensive, foolhardy, unrealistic and it invites authoritarian-style control. But let’s just start with the fact that actual, working smart-guns do not exist.
Biden, and gun-control activists, don’t care that these guns don’t exist; actually, that’s fine with them. When pressed, however, Biden claims the current lack of these smart guns isn’t due to various technological shortfalls. No, the reason these guns are not available today, he says, is because of NRA “bullying.”
The truth is irrelevant to Biden. He doesn’t feel he even has to acknowledge that the NRA is simply opposed to “smart” gun mandates, not the actual technology. The NRA has said officially: “The NRA doesn’t oppose the development of ‘smart’ guns, nor the ability of Americans to voluntarily acquire them. However, NRA opposes any law prohibiting Americans from acquiring or possessing firearms that don’t possess ‘smart’ gun technology.”
The NRA has also noted: “Gun-control supporters advocate laws to prohibit the sale of firearms that do not possess ‘smart’ technology, as a way to prohibit the manufacture of traditional handguns, raise the price of handguns that would be allowed to be sold and, presumably, to imbed into handguns a device that would allow guns to be disabled remotely.”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade organization for the firearms industry, doesn’t oppose the idea of smart guns, either. But, as the group has repeatedly pointed out, while Biden and others have breathlessly touted so-called “smart guns,” once again the technology simply doesn’t exist.
As NSSF has noted, millions and millions of dollars have been spent to develop this potential technology, including $12.6 million in dedicated federal funding by the U.S. Justice Department. To date, it’s all still in the prototype stage.
Every one of the prototypes the NSSF is aware of uses batteries. According to NSSF, “What is the default mode for the product when the battery fails? Does it default to a mode where the firearm cannot function at a time when the owner needs to use the firearm to save his or her life? Does it default to a mode where it can fire, creating the potential for an irresponsible owner leaving a loaded firearm accessible to an unauthorized user, such as a child, because the owner relied upon the technology that has failed?”
High-tech doesn’t come free or cheap, either. If they are available one day, expect “smart guns” to cost considerably more than traditional guns. And if these more-expensive firearms were made mandatory, no doubt many Americans would be priced out of the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Biden isn’t interested in reality or our rights; he is just interested in control. To this effect, Biden has even claimed that firearms can be made “smart” to a person’s DNA!
During the Democratic Presidential Primary debates, Biden said, “If I get elected president of the United States of America with your help, if that happens, guns, we have the capacity now in a James Bond-style to make sure no one can pull a trigger unless their DNA and fingerprint is on it. We have that capacity to do it now. You know it.”
Well, we do know that fingerprint-identification technology does exist; however, we don’t know anyone who has a “smart gun” equipped with DNA identification capabilities. Except maybe James Bond?
We also do know that a Biden administration would use every real or theoretical means it could dream up to take away Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
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