The senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, writing an Op-Ed response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, has accused the president and his speechwriters of “knowingly lying to the American people to peddle more gun control.”
NSSF’s Larry Keane opened his rebuttal noting, “It’s a tale as old as time. If President Joe Biden is giving a major speech, he’s going to lie about the firearm industry and the Second Amendment. Like clockwork, the president rattled off his favored laundry list of gun control requests and included several falsehoods in his first State of the Union address to the American people.
“The president and his handlers continue to peddle the lies even as record numbers of Americans are lawfully purchasing firearms and support for more gun control erodes,” Keane continued. “He’s already been fact-checked as wrong so many times it’s hard to keep count.”
Where Biden went wrong was in his claim the firearms industry is exempt from liability due to a federal law passed under then-President George W. Bush. The Associated Press reported Wednesday, “That’s false.” Likewise, the Washington Post Fact Checker said Biden is wrong.
“While gun manufacturers do have legal protections from being held liable for injuries caused by criminal misuse of their weapons thanks to the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, they are not exempt or immune from being sued,” the AP detailed.
“The law lays out exceptions where manufacturers or dealers can be held liable for damages their weapons cause, such as defects or damages in the design of the gun, negligence, or breach of contract or warranty regarding the purchase of a gun,” the news agency fact checker said.
That’s not Biden’s only credibility gap. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms came out swinging in a scathing statement in which Chairman Alan Gottlieb bristled, “His claim that bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ and original capacity magazines are ‘proven measures’ to reduce violent crime is demonstrably untrue. Just look at the FBI Uniform Crime Report.
“And we should note these are the same kinds of guns and magazines Ukrainian citizens are using to defend their freedom from a savage enemy bent on killing innocent civilians including women and children,” Gottlieb added.
Keane concurred, observing, “The duplicity of denying gun rights to American citizens and lauding the bravery of Ukrainians defending their homeland is staggering.”
“Perhaps Biden’s biggest fib of the night came when he said his proposals don’t infringe on the Second Amendment, and that they save lives,” he observed. “Crusading to disarm law-abiding citizens hasn’t saved a single life in this country. Banning commonly-owned firearms definitely violates the Constitution, and Biden knows it.”
