CLAIM: During a Tuesday speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden claimed the Second Amendment does not protect the right to purchase or own a cannon.
VERDICT: FALSE. The Second Amendment is not limited in a way that disallows cannon purchases.
Biden has made this claim numerous times in various ways during his presidency, as well as his campaign for presidency.
For example, he made claims about the Second Amendment not allowing cannon purchases on May 20, 2021, and June 23, 2021.
His June 23, 2021, statement was, “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of the people who could own a gun [and] what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
On August 30, 2022, he again suggested the Second Amendment was limited then said, “Right now you can’t go out and buy and automatic weapon, you can’t go out and buy a cannon.”
But the Second Amendment is not limited in a way that disallows cannon purchases. It does not even disallow the “automatic weapon” purchases Biden mentioned. Law-abiding Americans can find an automatic firearm on the market and legally buy it, if they are willing to pay the high prices and go through the ATF’s excruciating waiting period and registration requirements for doing so.
President Joe Biden speaks at the Arnaud C. Marts Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, August 30, 2022. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
When Biden first began making these claims about not being able to buy a cannon he often made sure to stress that they could not be bought by 21st century Americans or by colonial Americans.
On June 26, 2021, Breitbart News did a FACT CHECK on Biden’s cannon claims, noting:
Julie Anne Sweet, director of military studies at Baylor University, told PolitiFact: “It seems highly unlikely that there were restrictions on the private ownership [of cannons].”
Independent Institute’s Dave Kopel told PolitiFact, “I am not aware of a ban on any arm in colonial America.”
When the British Army swept into the South during the American Revolution they faced farmers, landowners, and other colonists who were armed with weapons very similar to their own. There was little, if any, difference between the British muskets and other firearms and the muskets and other firearms used by the colonists.
The often un-uniformed colonists were able to devastate the uniformed, military-trained British regulars and eventually force them to surrender on October 19, 1781.
The Second Amendment was not designed to keep Americans from owning cannons.
Biden’s continued claim about Americans not being able to buy cannons is false.
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, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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