Lies, Damn Lies and President Joe Biden

If the old chestnut concerning “lies, damn lies and statistics” was referring to a U.S. president, it would almost certainly be current President Joe Biden (D).

That fact was proven, once again, during the president’s late-August campaign-style appearance in Pennsylvania. Speaking to an audience at Wilkes University, Biden made another one of his preposterous statements about the AR-15—a type of semi-automatic rifle that he loves to hate and wants to ban.

“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun?” the president asked those in attendance. Apparently, he received no answer to that somewhat rhetorical question, and the White House press corps hasn’t followed up on the outright lie.

In truth, there are many rifle calibers that fire projectiles at a higher velocity than the roughly 3,000 feet per second (fps) of the .223 or 5.56 mm rounds that an AR-15 is typically chambered in, including the .220 Swift, .257 Weatherby Magnum and the .30/378 Weatherby. In fact, the average bullet out of an AR-15 moves less than three-times faster than a typical 115-grain 9 mm pistol bullet commonly used for home and self-defense. Recall, however, that the president once lied about that round, too, saying, “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

Apparently not believing the president would simply lie about the easily researched speed of a rifle bullet, the dubious “fact-checking” website, Snopes, looked into the matter. In the end, however, the “fact checkers” treated the asinine statement by the president with kid gloves: “The president’s claim is incorrect, and generalizes the varying speeds of bullets fired from different kinds of guns,” Snopes reported. Rather than sticking to “fact-checking,” Snopes went on to editorialize, “However, the AR-15 is still an especially lethal weapon and has been used to murder hundreds of people in mass shootings in the United States.”

Biden also used the occasion to take yet another shot at those Americans who rightly believe that the Second Amendment was written to ensure citizens could defend themselves against a tyrannical government.

“If you want to fight against a country, you need an F-15,” Biden said sarcastically. “You need something a little more than a gun. No, I’m not joking.”

Having a leader threaten law-abiding gun owners with hi-tech jet fighters seems like something you’d be more likely to hear in an authoritarian state. Hearing Biden make the statement didn’t sit well with freedom-loving citizens.

“While we’re here, let’s also acknowledge that ‘your AR-15 is useless because the government could just carpet bomb you into submission’ isn’t an argument in favor of gun control,” said Amy Swearer, a legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. “It’s actually an argument for a better armed citizenry and against trusting whoever said that.”

Additionally, in the same speech the president once again made his tired, oft-repeated statement about deer and bulletproof vests—a statement so ignorant that it’s hard to believe the so-called “most powerful man in the world” would continue to repeat it.

“And by the way, how many—my dad used to love to hunt in the Poconos when we lived in Scranton,” Biden said. “How many deer or bear are wearing Kevlar vests, huh? Not a joke.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. Somebody should tell Biden that—or at least tell whoever keeps adding that dopey line to his speeches.

Lastly, Biden encouraged attendees to vote based on a candidate’s willingness to curtail Second Amendment rights for all Americans.

“It’s time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them: ‘Are you for banning assault weapons? Yes or no?’ Ask them. If the answer is no, vote against them.”

Biden is correct about one thing: It is time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them if they are for banning common AR-15-style rifles. If the answer is yes, it’s time to vote them out and replace them with someone who respects the Second Amendment.