As the old saying goes, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
President Joe Biden, who has a long and well-documented history of trotting out all three whenever they suit his personal political agenda, gave us more of the same in his State of the Union address in February.
Before the entire nation, Biden declared:
“Ban assault weapons once and for all. We did it before. I led the fight to ban them in 1994. In the ten years the ban was law, mass shootings went down. After Republicans let it expire, mass shootings tripled. Let’s finish the job and ban assault weapons again.”
First of all, it’s important to remember that gun-ban politicians like Biden adopted the term “assault weapon” from the military in a deliberate effort to confuse the public and advance their agenda. They use it to mischaracterize a broad range of firearms used by law-abiding civilians.
The truth is the origin of “assault weapon” stems from the term “assault rifle,” which the U.S. Army defines explicitly as a selective-fire rifle chambered for a cartridge of intermediate power. The term “assault rifle” only applies to fully-automatic firearms rather than the semi-automatic firearms that Biden and his allies want to ban.
And as we’ve seen countless times over the past many years, gun-ban politicians simply slap the “assault weapon” tag on any firearm they want to eliminate—everything from shotguns, to pistols, to any gun with certain cosmetic features like a pistol grip or a folding stock.
As for the 1994 federal “assault weapons” ban, Biden knows it did nothing to reduce violent crime. He knows because a congressionally-mandated study—conducted during his time in the Senate—looked at the effects of the first 30 months of the ban and found it had no impact on crime.
A follow-up study found that “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” And research conducted in 2018 also found no evidence that “large-capacity magazine” bans and “assault-weapon” bans affect mass shootings.
You and I may scoff at bumbling Biden and his lies, but make no mistake: The threat to our freedom and safety could not be any bigger than it is right now.
We have a president in the White House who has spent the past two years destroying our criminal-justice system. From pushing insane policies like no-cash bail, to his outright refusal to use the laws at his disposal to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate violent felons, Joe Biden and his fellow anti-gun politicians are flat-out determined to keep the worst monsters in society out of jail and on the streets.
And now they want to ban your guns and leave you defenseless in the face of the unprecedented criminal crisis they’ve enabled.
Just imagine if Stephen Willeford, the courageous NRA member who used his AR-15 to stop a mass shooter at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, had not been allowed to own the very firearm that Biden wants to ban.
“The police officers in my town are some of the best,” said Willeford.
“Our deputies and officers did everything they could to respond to the active shooter in Sutherland Springs. But, as author Chris Bird wrote, ‘When seconds count, police are only minutes away.’ In our community, it was nineteen. It took 19 minutes for the police to make it across the county to our town, after the first 911 call. Every second of that time counted. I was my community’s first responder.”
Or imagine if brave NRA member Jack Wilson, who stopped a would-be mass shooter in his Fort Worth, Texas church, had not been allowed to own the semi-automatic pistol that so many anti-gun politicians want to ban.
“I don’t feel like I killed a human being. I killed evil, and that’s how I’m processing it,” said Wilson.
“I’m thankful to God that I have been blessed with the ability and desire to serve him in the role of head of security at the church.”
This entire issue all boils down to the most fundamental right any human being should possess: The right to stay alive.
It’s about whether you have a God-given right to protect yourself and your loved ones—not only with a bolt-action rifle, but with an AR-15, and not only with a six-shot revolver, but with semi-automatic technology. So that when a criminal—or several of them—invades your home, you’re not handicapped to three rounds, or seven rounds, or any of the ludicrous and arbitrary proposals put forward by Biden and his ilk, but have as many rounds as you need to stop the monster who is threatening your life and your family.
You and I know that a strong and unified NRA is the only thing that stands between our most basic human right of self-defense and Joe Biden’s life-threatening gun-ban agenda.
I promise you, as long as there is breath in my lungs, I will never allow Biden or any anti-gun politician to take away my most basic human right. And because you’re an NRA member, I know you won’t, either.
