Not that I care, but Joe Biden is wasting an inordinate amount of time on issues that won’t help his re-election. His side has lost all the landmark decisions on Second Amendment issues. It’s not close to being settled yet. We still have some things to clear up regarding the process of obtaining a concealed carry permit—may issue versus shall issue—and reciprocity agreements, but it’s getting there. After that, it’s about holding the line against anti-gun leftists.
BIDEN: "I used teach the Second Amendment in law school ... From the very beginning, there were limitations. You couldn't own a cannon!"
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 10, 2024
(Not true) pic.twitter.com/EhJ4XVLQM1
Fact check: you could and still can own a cannon. https://t.co/jRv006Z8ve
— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) April 10, 2024
Still, Joe likes to trot out this utter lie about the Second Amendment: you can’t own a cannon. Oh, Joe knows—he was a professor who taught this stuff, which is even more disturbing. The president repeated this lie in an interview with Univision. Fact check: you can own cannons. And even the Washington Post called him out two years ago [emphasis mine]:
“Everything in that statement is wrong,” said David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the Independence Institute. After 1791, “there were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own.” Not until the early 1800s were there any efforts to pass restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, he said.
“I think what he’s saying here is that the Second Amendment was never understood to guarantee everyone the right to own all types of weapons, which I believe is true,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “As phrased, it sounds like the Second Amendment itself limited ownership, which is not true.”
[…]
In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare war. But there is another element of that clause that might seem strange to modern ears — Congress also had the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.”
What’s that? These were special waivers that allowed private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it. The “letter of marque” allowed a warship to cross into another country’s territory to take a ship, while a “letter of reprisal” gave authorization to bring the ship back to the home port of the capturer.
Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle.
Recommended
The publication awarded him four Pinocchios and added, “Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim—and it’s been deemed false. 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.”
Yes, he does.
Joe is a habitual liar who appears to have been part of every major American historical event. As Stephen Miller (RedSteeze) quipped, he's the Forrest Gump of presidents, but one who can't remember when his son died but will exploit his death to the most absurd limits to scrap up some political points.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member