President Joe Biden ridiculed lawful gun owners on Friday evening during a fundraiser with Democrat elites in California.
The president spoke at an event in Beverly Hills, California, raising the issue of gun control as a major priority for his administration.
During the event, Biden told a story of what it was like when he was campaigning in Delaware after supporting the ban of some semi-automatic weapons and capacity limits on ammunition magazines in the 1990s.
Biden explained that when gun owners would approach him and criticize him for trying to take their guns away, he would ridicule them for owning high-capacity semiautomatic rifles.
“They’d say, ‘God darn, Joe, what the hell are you doing taking my gun away?'” Biden recalled. “And I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.’ I said, ‘How many — when you go deer hunting, how many deer are wearing Kevlar vests?'”
“‘By the way, if you need 30, 40, 60, up to 100 rounds to fire,’ I said, ‘you’re a danger to yourself, man,'” he continued.
During his remarks, Biden described himself as a gun owner, noting that he currently had a pair of shotguns.
“I’m a gun owner. I own two shotguns. My son Beau passed away. He had another shotgun,” he said. “We used to like to skeet shoot. We weren’t hunters.”
Biden also expressed frustration with Republicans who wanted to allow teachers to keep guns in their classrooms.
He reminded the audience that his wife Jill Biden was a teacher and he believed the idea was dangerous.
“There’s a reason why the military takes so long to train somebody,” he said. “It’s not easy to pick up a rifle or a gun and blow somebody’s brains out in front.”
Biden explained that most gun owners were typically more dangerous to themselves just by having a gun.
“More people get killed with their own gun in their home trying to stop a burglar than, in fact, any other cause.” He said. “Think about that. Because it’s hard to do. It’s a hard thing to do.”