Biden Vows Swift Action On Gun Control

According to the media, Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States. Who knows, maybe when all is said and done, he actually will be. Regardless, there are legal challenges to the election outcome in enough states that you just don’t know how things will shake out in the end.

Regardless, Biden is acting like the president-elect. It’s not like the media will call him on it, to be sure.

So what precisely does Biden have in mind for his first days in office? Oh, nothing much.

Joe Biden has a lot of plans for his first day as president, and some of it can actually happen in a single day — a fair amount of which he can set in motion right away even though Democrats have so far fallen short of capturing the Senate.

Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, reverse President Donald Trump’s rollbacks of public health and environmental rules and call allies worldwide to reassure them, all on his first day in the White House. Before that day is done, he says he will put in place a national strategy for containing the coronavirus pandemic, rejoin the World Health Organization, end the ban on immigration from several predominantly Muslim nations and expand rights for Latin American asylum seekers.

Biden has also promised swift action on housing, labor, gun control, LGBTQ rights and government reform.

Yep. Old Sleepy Joe has his sights set on our guns, the same as always.

Let’s also remember that the media–the people who provide moderators for debates–intentionally ignored the gun issue at a time when millions of Americans were buying guns. They colluded in an attempt to avoid bringing up an issue that might well hurt Biden in the general election.

Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done about all that right now.

Instead, we need to remember that Biden isn’t looking at his narrow election victory nor the fact that his party lost ground in the House as any kind of indictment on his policies. Hell, Nancy Pelosi said he has a “mandate” to enact the Democrats’ policies.

In other words, they’re coming for your guns.

Oh, I know, the fact-checkers will claim they’re doing no such thing, but Biden has been open about his desire to enact an assault weapon ban that basically recategorizes modern sporting rifles as Class III firearms. In order to keep your weapons, you’ll have to pay a $200 tax stamp. That’s going to be more than some people are in a position to pay. Their choice is to either become a criminal or give up their guns.

That’s by design.

Further, they know that a lot of people have more than one AR- or AK-pattern rifle. They know a lot of people have five or six or even more. There’s a good chance that $200 per firearm is going to end up being thousands of dollars for many. Again, the attempt is to force people to turn over their property.

If that’s not coming for our guns, I don’t know what is.

Yet there is an upside. With only narrow control of the House and a split in the Senate at best for the Democrats, there may not be enough political will to pass anything like that. Vulnerable Democrats may not be willing to alienate pro-gun moderates, and if the Senate remains in GOP hands, an assault weapon ban is something of a non-starter.

Of course, that all assumes that there are Democrats not willing to go along with the leadership, that there aren’t any spineless Republicans in the House, and that the Senate Republicans will hold the line.

It’s a mighty tall order, but it’s all we may have depending on how the legal challenges shake out.