President Joe Biden is using the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, to push for new gun control measures. Fellow Democrats like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who has supported government confiscation of lawfully acquired firearms in the past, and Texas gubernatorial candidate Robert Francis O'Rourke, are doing the same.
"It's time to act," Biden said at the White House last week. "It's time for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget."
But in his haste to exploit the situation, Biden has already given up the game and indicated earlier this week the administration is eyeing regulations for handguns. He also plans to issue a number of gun control executive orders and continues to make false, previously disproven claims about firearms ownership.
NEW - Biden on 9mm ammo: "2nd Amendment was never absolute."pic.twitter.com/D9nDjmXKD1
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 30, 2022
Of course, 9mm is a handgun caliber and the most popular in the United States for personal self-protection. Further, Biden continues to repeat disinformation that Americans weren't allowed to own "high caliber" firearms, including cannons, at the time the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791.
"This week, President Biden repeated a false claim that many of us have corrected in the past. When he was announcing new rules for so-called 'ghost guns' and other measures, President Biden renewed his false claim that early Americans could not buy a cannon," George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley writes. "It does sound bizarre because it is factually and legally untrue. I have received calls from media for years about this claim and it does not improve by repetition. Even the Washington Post has declared Biden's understanding of the Second Amendment to be false."
"Once again, there were no federal laws barring cannon ownership when the Second Amendment was enacted. Gun laws remained local matters and I do not know of any bans on cannons or other gun types until much later in our history. Early local laws did control concealed weapons, though concealed cannons were not part of those ordinances," he continued. "Indeed, the Constitution itself supports private cannon ownership in the case of privateers."
Biden just repeated his false statement about the Second Amendment again,. https://t.co/bRc3OwoNIW It does not seem to matter to the President that this is a false claim about the history of the Second Amendment. One could even call it disinformation. https://t.co/RuueKPpXyZ
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 30, 2022
Biden also continues to falsely claim the ban on modern sporting rifles from 1994-to 2004 cut down on school shootings, mass shootings and crime. The facts say otherwise.
A 2004 Department of Justice funded study from the University of Pennsylvania Center of Criminology concluded the ban cannot be credited with a decrease in violence carried out with firearms. The report is titled "An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003."
"We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury," the summary of the report on the study's findings states. "The ban's impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs [assault weapons] were used in no more than 8% of gun crimes even before the ban."
...Indeed, there is no evidence that the ban had any appreciable impact on gun violence and most studies questioned the impact even on mass shootings.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 31, 2022
