Without support from Republican lawmakers, House Democrats are expected to pass eight gun-related bills collectively called the “Protect our Kids Act.” The legislation is unlikely to pass in the evenly-split U.S. Senate but the Democrats have openly said they are The Good Guys in this debate and will not be stopped by the Senate or by Supreme Court rulings.
“If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it,” Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) vowed at a heated hearing last week. “And we will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation in our communities.”
Meanwhile, a week ago, when he returned to the White House after visiting the tragic scene in Uvalde, Texas, President Biden told reporters he recalled visiting a New York emergency room where he learned about gunshot victims.
"They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life,” Biden said, referring to the emergency room doctors. “A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”
Biden then went on to call the 9mm pistol a “high-caliber” weapon and said there is no “rational basis” for owning one for self-protection or for hunting. That nonsensical claim about the most popular self-defense handgun in the United States made news headlines, generated a response from NRA, and forced the White House to clean up the mess.
“[President Biden] supports a ban on sales of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and expanded background checks to keep guns out of dangerous hands," Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters the next day. "He does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns."
Biden has gun-hating history
The current boogeyman of gun-hating Democrats is the AR-15 rifle, which was used by the Uvalde shooter and remains Enemy No. 1 of Democrats, but gun-ban proponents could easily pivot to banning handguns since they are used to commit most crimes in the U.S.
It's not clear why Biden mentioned 9mm pistols to reporters last week but alert Second Amendment defenders have pointed out Biden vowed to get rid of 9mm pistols in 2019, when he was campaigning for president.
“Why should we allow people to have military-style weapons,” he unhappily asked, “including pistols with 9mm bullets that can hold 10 or more rounds?”
Going back to the White House reaction to Biden’s comment about 9mm pistols, the press secretary told reporters the President “does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns."
That answer leaves room for a follow-up question: Does he support a ban on some of them?
'Shall not be infringed' pretty absolute
Mike Hammond, who is legislative counsel at Gun Owners of America, tells AFN what concerned him last week was President Biden’s suggestion -- the same one he stated just four months ago -- that the Second Amendment is not “absolute” about gun ownership.
"I respect the culture, the tradition, the concerns of lawful gun owners," Biden said during a primetime address to the country. "At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute."
“It sort of says it's absolute,” Hammond counters. “I mean, the right of the people to keep and bear arms ‘shall not be infringed.’”
In the same address, Biden went on to insist Democrats' effort to address the latest school shooting "isn't about taking away anyone's rights," even though they are literally attempting to take away 20 million semi-auto rifles or make the owner a federal criminal.
Back in a February speech, attentive gun owners and groups such as Gun Owners of America witnessed Biden also make claims about the 2nd Amendment that got fact-checked.
“There’s no violation of the Second Amendment, right…There’s no amendment that’s absolute,” Biden told reporters on a visit to New York City. “When the amendment was passed it didn’t say anybody can own a gun, any kind of gun, and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed, so there’s no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.”
Despite the claims of Biden, cannons were not outlawed in the colonies as fact-checks from The Washington Post and from PolitiFact have noted.
“Joe Biden is saying the quiet part out loud,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said of Biden’s comments at the time.
“Biden is the worst gun grabber in decades,” J.D. Vance, a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, said of Biden.
H.R. 748 mandates 'safe' storage
During the same press conference in February, Biden then concluded his fact-checked comment about the meaning of the 2nd Amendment by bizarrely stating, “But that’s another issue.”
In fact, in light of Democrats using the Uvalde shooting to pull out their gun bills, many Republican lawmakers and gun owners can’t think of a more important issue to debate than the meaning and protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment, especially since the Founding Fathers intended for colonists to own and to keep guns in their homes.
Related to that, a second bedrock constitutional right is also in peril. In the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” if it became law with President Biden’s signature, gun owners would be required by H.R. 748 to store their firearms in a manner the federal government deems safe or be fined $500 and have the firearm confiscated for failing to do so.
In all, according to the liberal website Vox, four of the eight bills involve storage of firearms in the home.
The 4th Amendment and its deterrence of “unreasonable searches and seizures” is another important portion of the U.S. Constitution. That sentence is tied to colonists being forced to allow soldiers to enter and search their homes for illegal goods, and it is the reason police must produce a warrant before entering your home.
“It's interesting that [Biden] pulls out rights that don't exist in the Constitution at all, such as the right to kill your baby,” Hammond tells AFN. “And yet he's willing to pare down the constitutional rights the Founding Fathers viewed as paramount."
