President Joe Biden referred to Second Amendment restrictions as “reasonable” during his speech to Congress Wednesday evening.
He said, “We’re not changing the Constitution; we’re being reasonable.”
This statement followed on the heels of his contention that no amendment to the Constitution is without limits, that “‘no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.”
He added, “From the very beginning, there were certain kinds of weapons that couldn’t be owned by Americans. Certain people couldn’t own those weapons, ever.”
Biden did not provide any substantiation for the claim that there were “certain weapons” average Americans could not own on December 15, 1791, the day the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights were ratified. Moreover, he did not address that when the British invaded the colonies, they found themselves facing common men who fought for freedom using muskets very much like the muskets being used against them.
In other words, the gap between military and civilian was actually much smaller in the late 18th century than it is in the early 21st century.
Biden pushed universal background checks, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and new gun controls for gun parts kits.
He also pushed an “assault weapons” ban and claimed the 1994 ban lowered gun crime/”gun violence.” But the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice issued a report in 2004 to the contrary, finding that “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.