Joe Biden is once again on the warpath against guns and the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, appearing recently in Maryland and Pennsylvania to reaffirm his commitment to ban so-called “assault weapons.”
Speaking Tuesday at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, The Guardian is reporting Biden told the crowd, “I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country. Determined.”
Only two months before the midterm elections that could cost Biden and the Democrats control of Capitol Hill, the president said he is also planning to tighten gun laws, according to Fox News. It did not take long for a major national gun rights organization to respond.
“That’s tantamount to declaring war on millions of American gun owners,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “Instead of promising to crack down on violent criminals, he once again demonized a type of firearm and the law-abiding citizens who own them.”
In a scathing statement to the media, Gottlieb ripped Biden for having pledged to unite the country, then immediately attacking the gun rights of a third of the population.
“Threatening to take the property of honest Americans in lieu of locking up killers and crazy people is not the way to unify a nation, unless his goal is to unite the nation’s 100 million gun owners against him and Democrats everywhere,” Gottlieb said.
The Guardian has posted quotes from Biden’s Pennsylvania speech, during which he accused “the vast majority of congressional Republicans” of voting against the ban nearly 30 years ago “saving lives and keeping America safe.”
But the president might need a history lesson. As noted by Factcheck.org in March 2021, “President Joe Biden claims the 10-year assault weapons ban that he helped shepherd through the Senate as part of the 1994 crime bill ‘brought down these mass killings.’ But the raw numbers, when adjusted for population and other factors, aren’t so clear on that.”
Biden is telling audiences they need to keep Democrats in control of Congress in order for him to continue pushing his gun control agenda, which many in the Second Amendment community consider “extremist.” More than a year ago, Biden admitted during a TownHall hosted by CNN he also wants to ban 9mm handguns.
“These are not the remarks of a chief executive determined to bring people together,” Gottlieb observed. “They are the comments of a demagogue interested only in keeping his party in power so he can criminalize a third of the population whose only offense is that they exercise a right clearly spelled out in, and protected by, the Second Amendment of our Constitution and affirmed by three Supreme Court rulings since 2008.
“Biden is clearly signaling his complete disregard for the votes of tens of millions of gun owners two months before the midterm elections,” Gottlieb added. “That cavalier indifference is likely to bring gun owners to the polls in huge numbers, and they will not be voting to prolong his gun prohibition agenda. His open contempt for the Second Amendment could backfire worse than even he could imagine.”