Biden Goes on Record Demanding New Handguns & Rifles Be Single-Shot Only
Struggling to stay afloat in the remaining first-to-vote states, 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden seemed to take a radical step to the left this week with regard to his platform position on gun control.
The former vice president told a CNN town hall audience Wednesday that his administration would go well beyond the so-called “assault weapons” ban supported by and large within the Democratic Party, seeking also to federally ban the sale of “silencers” and “clips that have multiple bullets in them.”
This substantial extension of an already strict gun control proposal to various firearm attachments, the candidate suggested, was a reaffirmation of promises made to the families of those impacted by the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
“I made a commitment and I mean it,” Biden said, “I made a commitment that I’m going to do everything in my power, in office or out of office, to get those assault weapons off the street — which I’ve done once already — and to get those clips that have multiple bullets in them not for sale, not be able to sell silencers.”
Joe Biden says that he wants to ban “clips that have multiple bullets in them.”
This makes no sense.
All clips hold multiple rounds. That’s the definition of a clip.
Biden also probably means to say magazines, but it’s the same problem. Magazines hold multiple rounds. pic.twitter.com/HREQ4Vj5ya
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) February 21, 2020
Coming just days before the Nevada caucuses, Biden’s claim drew cheers from audience members in Las Vegas, a community deeply impacted in October 2017 by the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history — which claimed the lives of 58 concert-goers on the Strip and injured hundreds more.
Unfortunately for the floundering old-line Democrat, however, the claim does little more than capitalize on the emotional ammunition generated by re-opening old wounds.
That and, of course, fully display the impacts of a race-to-the-bottom 2020 Democratic presidential primary, which has doomed the party’s moderates to a skydiving trip down the endless rabbit hole of left-wing radicalism.
Put more simply by the Trump campaign’s Deputy Director of Communications Zach Parkinson, Biden’s statement “makes no sense.”
First of all, anyone worth even half his salt on the topic of firearms knows that a bullet is the projectile a gun fires. The thing one inserts into the firearm to discharge that bullet is a cartridge, which is comprised of the bullet, the gunpowder and the shell casing.
Second of all, a clip is an outdated tool used to hold cartridges for ease of loading older firearm models by hand.
As Parkinson also pointed out, “Biden also probably means to say magazines” — spring-activated cartridge holders that automatically push a new round into the chamber upon firing a more modern, semi-automatic firearm.
Semantics aside, however, a clip and a magazine both hold “multiple bullets.” It is something of a chore to find modern firearms that do not. Sure, there are always some single-shot Derringers and target pistols, over-under rifles, shotguns and muzzle-loader muskets.
But is that really where we want to go with our reading of the Second Amendment?
Is that really where a Biden administration would seek to take us?
I’ve taken on the @NRA and beaten them — twice. And I’ll do it again as president because everyone should need to pass a background check to buy a gun. pic.twitter.com/Ti2iuhC1Hx
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 19, 2020
Alex, a law enforcement officer and former Marine from Reno, supports common-sense gun safety reform — just like the majority of America. Here’s why he’s supporting our campaign: pic.twitter.com/BAM6qFjHzs
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 21, 2020
Admittedly, I may be going a bit too hard on ol’ Joe.
Having long supported the banning of high-capacity magazines, Biden may have just misspoken Wednesday night. (We all know he’s good for that.)
But either way, the statement raises some logical question: Shouldn’t we demand more of the gun-control left? Should leftists not expect more of themselves?
For as long as I can remember — which I will concede isn’t terribly long — gun control has been a losing issue for the American left. As a God-given right under the United States Constitution, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is one many Americans are, rightly, not willing to budge on.
Let’s all be honest. Former President Barack Obama’s remarks about heartland Americans bitterly clinging to their guns and their religion was not empty. It was unbelievably condescending and grossly miscalculated, but it was not entirely untrue.
Americans do cling to their firearms. They know what freedom costs.
The right ones know that they have those firearms in the event the people of this continent are ever unfortunate enough to have to pay that cost again.
Knowing how sacred that is, wouldn’t you think those on the left would have caught on by now that serious claims as radical as Biden’s are going nowhere in the legislature or that misspoken claims as ridiculously uninformed only stand to make the political class all the more unrelatable to the American people?
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