In the wake of two more tragic and high-profile shootings in Virginia and Colorado, resulting in multiple innocent casualties, President Joe Biden took the opportunity to ratchet up his anti-gun rhetoric following a successful midterm election cycle for Democrats. During a public appearance in Massachusetts on Thanksgiving Day, Biden made a soft pledge to push a federal 2022 assault weapons ban through the currently Democrat-controlled Congress and onto his desk before the year is out.
However, while most of the news reports characterized the president’s remarks as a call to ban so-called “assault weapons,” he actually targeted all semi-automatic weapons in his comments: a much broader category that accounts for the vast majority of firearms sold today.
“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said in his address. “It has no – no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profits for gun manufacturers.”
“The President is not going to stop until we ban assault ban — assault weapons. This is something that he did 30 years ago, as you know. In 1994 he was able to put that forward, and it saved lives,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during a Nov. 22 press conference.
Jean-Pierre is referring to the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which was allowed to expire under a sunset clause 10 years later in 2004 under the George W. Bush administration. Studies have found no conclusive evidence the AWB had any effect on crime in the U.S. while it was in effect for a decade.
During the Thanksgiving event, when Biden was asked if he would move on a new AWB during the current lame duck session, he said, “I’m going to try,” and added, “I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes.”
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Can Democrats Push a 2022 Assault Weapons Ban Through a Lame Duck Congress?
Since the midterm election cycle failed to produce the long-forecasted red tsunami, the Biden administration clearly feels emboldened to double down on the gun issue. Is it realistic to expect Democrats can find the support they will need to push ban guns of any sort through the lame-duck congress by Jan. 3?
Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), told Free Range American that the chances of an AWB bill passing in that timeframe are slim to none.
“Even Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has never seen a gun control idea that he hasn’t supported, threw cold water on this idea,” Oliva said. “There are nowhere close to 60 votes required to overcome the filibuster […] in the Senate.”
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Would It Pass Constitutional Muster?
While lawmakers at both the federal and state level have certainly been busy passing all kinds of anti-gun legislation lately, the courts have been striking much of it down.
“Even if President Biden were to attempt such an idea, it would be clearly unconstitutional,” Oliva added. “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller and Bruen decisions affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms in common use is protected by the Constitution and that the test for restrictions on individual firearm ownership is the Second Amendment. There are no other ‘balancing-interest’ tests suggested by President Biden that a firearm has to have ‘social redeeming value.’”
The “common use” determination is indeed a big problem for Biden and anti-gun lawmakers — the term appears in the Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen opinion no less than eight times. Essentially, like Heller, the Bruen decision affirms that the most popular firearms in use by the general public are clearly protected by the Second Amendment.
“No party disputes that handguns are weapons in common use today for self-defense,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the Bruen opinion.
If Biden’s true goal is to target all semi-automatic firearms as his public comments suggest, he will have to convince the courts that the estimated 157 million semi-auto firearms sold between 1990 and 2020, according to the NSSF, do not qualify as firearms in common use.
Even if Biden fumbled his words, which he sometimes does, the sales figures for modern sporting rifles (more commonly known in anti-gun circles as “assault rifles”) are equally staggering. The same NSSF data cited above revealed that more than 24 million AR-style guns were purchased between 1990 and 2020 — and ARs are not the only firearms that AWB legislation typically targets. These sales numbers have only grown since the pandemic lockdowns and recent social unrest.
Earlier this month, the American Journal of Public Health published a study that further demonstrates just how popular and commonplace firearms have become in recent years and the reasons why. The study found that about 16 million American adults carried a loaded handgun in 2019 — that number represents an increase of 7 million from the 9 million carriers reported in 2015. Of those 16 million, about 6 million said they carry daily — twice the number who did so in 2015.
These numbers point to a noticeable trend in American gun ownership: More and more gun owners are choosing firearms for self-defense (rather than hunting or recreation only) and embracing their right to carry them outside the home.
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