Reason has among the most biting of lines I have ever read to describe our President’s understanding of firearms.
President Joe Biden so frequently and willfully tells lies about firearms that, if he were a podcaster talking about anything other than guns, aging rockers would trip over their walkers in a rush to sever even the most tenuous ties to him...
At this point I can only ascribe it to total and utter ignorance, because a willful and remotely well crafted lie would land better than these claims. They can’t keep the lies straight because they don’t comprehend what they are lying about.
Mr. “You Couldn’t Buy Cannons”, when you absolutely could and they cost less than a good wig, Biden is genuinely the least credible President on firearms in my lifetime. Perhaps ever. Even President Obama seemed to keep a discreet distance from the topic, but not Joe. Joe Biden dived right in to the Maximum Fuddlore pond with the double barrel shotgun line back during the Obama administration and he hasn’t let up since. Trying to feign credibility and losing it with each mention.
Nobody should take this man’s opinion seriously on firearms. On this topic he should be treated with the disdain normally reserved for flat-earthers on astronomy on planetary physics.
Of course, we live in an age of misinformation and disinformation and probably should expect nothing better from the White House. But Biden proposes to impose ever-tougher rules based on his repetitive malarkey, illustrating the problem of governments wielding their vast regulatory apparatus based on misunderstandings and malice.
Why are firearms the topic we are absolutely, unequivocally hell bent on allowing the absolute most ill-informed and idiotic imbeciles create binding policy upon and put people in prison for?
“Congress needs to do its part too: pass universal background checks, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, close loopholes, and keep out of the hands of domestic abusers — weapons, repeal the liability shield for gun manufacturers,” Biden huffed last week in New York. “Imagine had we had a liability — they’re the only industry in America that is exempted from being able to be sued by the public. The only one.”
That is a blatantly false statement, it isn’t even true from the traditional ‘certain point of view’ that politicians favor in order to be technically kinda correct if you think about it. Gun manufacturers can absolutely be sued for any of the common things any other industrial industry can be sued for. If their product is dangerous to operate, releases a hazardous chemical, doesn’t work as explicitly in operation advertised, etc. The only thing they have a specific protection against is suit for the criminal misuse of their product, the same way Ford or Toyota is not at fault if someone deliberately runs over somebody else with their car. Except the firearm industry needed special legislated protections because of people like Biden, people who will use civil liability as a weapon to crush industries they disagree with.
Such protection is also not unique to the firearms industry. For example, as we’ve been reminded over the past year, the pharmaceutical industry enjoys some protection against liability over vaccines. Congress also implemented limits on liability for the general aviation industry.
Industries have enjoyed the legal protections from liabilities in their various related fields and those protections are structured to prevent frivolous lawsuits upon grounds the industry cannot control for. Companies across all industries continue to be liable for the factors they can control, firearms included.
That very fact is why the Remington lawsuit was recently settled the way it was, because that legal action targeted the advertising of the Bushmaster brand. They are responsible for their ads, that is among the reasons every single alcohol ad ends with some variation of ‘Drink Responsibly’ in order to separate behaviors where alcohol was a contributing factor from the maker encouraging any behavior.
“Congress has passed a number of laws that protect a variety of business sectors from lawsuits in certain situations, so the situation is not unique to the gun industry,” PolitiFact pointed out in 2015 as it ruled Clinton’s accusations against the firearms industry “false.”
Biden really has no excuse at this late date to be repeating long-since debunked claims about the firearms industry. Unfortunately, he’s also a serial bullshitter about the parameters of Second Amendment protections.
He blatantly used the vaunted “deer aren’t wearing kevlar” line about assault weapons and hundred round magazines during the State of the Union. I don’t think even the most pro-ban everything gun controller wants to play that line any longer, but he did it.
- It isn’t about deer, Joe. See exhibit Ukraine. The Russians are wearing kevlar and plates.
- “Kevlar” doesn’t stop rifle rounds anyway and any of your Secret Service could tell you that. The colloquial term Kevlar refers overwhelmingly to soft armors which are only sufficient to stop lower velocity threats than 5.56.
- Game laws in all jurisdictions already limit hunting capacities and calibers so stop using the second amendment is for hunting only, you absolute boob of a human. Pretend competence well enough for 2 seconds of your life and say you want to ban them for a reason the rifle actually makes a modicum of sense towards, and that you are afraid of them. I can genuinely appreciate honest stupidity, it is at least honest, an irrational fear of something is a condition I can rationally understand for fear is a survival trait. This asinine imbecilic quadrupling down on all things wrong with every attempt of gun control policy is just tired at this point.
So enough! This garbage has been spewed for 18 years and become more and more shrill in the retelling. Ascribing mythical powers to simple machines and blatantly ignoring any evidence that suggests your policy is a pipe dream that relies on total compliance of the criminally and insanely noncompliant.
Gun control’s success relies upon the compliance of the noncompliant, how stupid is that?
“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” Biden insisted with regard to the Second Amendment during the same speech last week. “You couldn’t buy a cannon in — when the — this — this amendment was passed. And so, no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.”
You absolutely an unquestionably could by a cannon
Once again, that’s just not true.
“There were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own” when the Bill of Rights was implemented, the Independence Institute’s David Kopel told the Washington Post last summer after an earlier iteration of Biden’s “cannon” claim.
“In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons,” the Post’s Glenn Kessler noted, pointing to letters of marque and reprisal which commissioned private warships to act on behalf of the United States. “Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle.”
You not only could have a cannon, you could have a warship and the Government would pay you to harass enemy shipping. This would be like sailing the African coast today in a mock freighter waiting to sink pirates and then getting a check from the Government for each confirmed, or a contract rate to patrol the waterway. This is absolutely something that is in the realm of modern security contracting.
“Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false,” Kessler added. “We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.”
Every false claim the President lays in this regard further erodes an already atrocious credibility rating. The President of the United States cannot be held to the most basic standards of historical accuracy on a constitutional issue, why should he be taken seriously on any issue.
These falsehoods matter because they’re repeated by a powerful government official who uses them to argue for changes in law and further restrictions on human activity. Either he’s too profoundly thick to learn new information, or else motivated by malice and unconcerned by the truth, but either way he shouldn’t be threatening to use the armed power of the state against people based on nonsense.
