Well, Joe Biden said something stupid—again. I know diarrhea of the mouth is the former vice president’s lifelong issue, but this time it was rather unsettling, especially after such a tragic event. Devin Kelley murdered 26 people and wounded 20 more when he opened fire on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 5. He was by all accounts disturbed. An Air Force veteran, he was court martialed in 2012 for domestic abuse. He was convicted, sentenced to a year in jail, and then given a bad-conduct discharged in 2014. He was able to obtain weapons because the Air Force did not forward his criminal record to the FBI. That’s how he was able to pass a background check, despite being a prohibited person. Domestic abusers are not allowed to own firearms; there’s no argument there. And it’s been law for years, despite the anti-gun Left’s amnesia on the matter.
Stephen Willeford lived near the church. His daughter alerted him of the gunshots and a man in tactical near the church, which prompted him to grab his AR-15 rifle. He ran across the street—barefoot—and engaged Kelley, preventing him from inflicting more violence on the innocent churchgoers. Willeford is an NRA member and was a certified instructor. Yet, that part was glossed over by Biden, who answered questions during a Today Show town hall event on Monday. A woman asked the former vice president how the Democratic anti-gun agenda could be justified since Willeford, a legal gun owner (a good guy with a gun is more like it), stopped the carnage from being more extensive in Texas. Biden said said that Willeford shouldn’t have been carrying the weapon he was carrying because he’s for a so-called assault weapons ban (via Washington Examiner) [emphasis mine]:
How do you justify Democratic view on gun control when TX shooter was stopped by man who was legally licensed to carry gun? Crowd asks Biden pic.twitter.com/an35oT3rLY
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 13, 2017
During an interview on NBC's "Today" show, an audience member asked Biden asked how he would "justify the Democratic view on gun control when the shooter was stopped by a man who was legally licensed to carry a gun." But Biden talked more broadly about the need for gun control.
"First of all, the kind of gun he was carrying, he shouldn't be carrying," Biden said in an apparent reference to the Texas church shooter. He then mentioned a gun control law he had introduced while in the Senate.
"Number two, it's just rational to say certain people shouldn't have guns. Now the fact that some people with guns are legally able to acquire a gun and they turn out to be crazy after the fact, that's life. There's nothing you can do about that," Biden said. "But we can save a lot of lives and we stopped tens of thousands of people from getting guns who shouldn't have guns."
Of course, the law he touted in his answer was the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which was pat of an omnibus crime bill signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. It did nothing to reduce gun crime. Moreover, shotguns and rifles are rarely used gun gun crimes. Liberals just find the AR-15 scary.
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We can debate this, but it’s dumb. He’s obviously trying to articulate the point that if we extended the ban, this wouldn’t have happened. No, Joe—if the government did its job and was able to update NICS properly—then, this shooting would have been prevented. Leaving out the caliber round it fires, the AR-15 operates no differently that any other weapon on the civilian market. It’s semi-automatic (i.e. fires one round per trigger pull) and can carry a high-capacity magazine. Remember, liberals think anything that holds 15 or more rounds is high capacity. Besides revolvers and 1911s, a lot of handguns are accompanied by 15-round magazines, or have ones that fire more the 10. That still gives liberals the jitters, but to say that Willeford, a hero, shouldn’t have been carrying an AR-15 as the opening line to the answer to this question just shows you why Democrats lose on gun policy. Moreover, we can see why Biden has never won nationally with his presidential bids; he just talks himself right out of a rational response. Willeford should have been unarmed? Are you kidding me, Joe?
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