{"id":81907,"date":"2022-06-05T12:07:28","date_gmt":"2022-06-05T17:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81907"},"modified":"2022-06-05T14:14:41","modified_gmt":"2022-06-05T19:14:41","slug":"81907","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81907","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s Inner Trudeau: On Guns, the President seems to be Operating Under the Wrong Constitution<\/a><\/p>\n

Below is my\u00a0column in The Hill<\/a>\u00a0on the calls for gun bans after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. The massacre has already been used as the basis for calls to end the filibuster, pack the court, limits on gun ownership, and outright bans.\u00a0One member called for all of the above<\/a>. The rhetoric is again outstripping the reality of constitutional and practical limits for gun control. Last night, President Joe Biden formally called for banning \u201cassault weapons\u201d while\u00a0repeating the dubious claim<\/a>\u00a0that an earlier ban sharply reduced mass shootings.<\/p>\n

Here is the column:<\/p>\n

In our increasingly hateful and divisive politics, there are times when our nation seems incapable of coming together for a common purpose. Tragedies \u2014 moments of shared national grieving and mutual support \u2014 once were the exception. Yet one of the most chilling aspects of the aftermath of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was how the moment of unity was quickly lost to political posturing.<\/p>\n

Politicians have long admitted that a crisis is an opportunity not to be missed \u2014 the greater the tragedy, the greater the opportunity. After the\u00a0mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket<\/a>, New York\u2019s Gov.\u00a0Kathy Hochul\u00a0<\/a><\/span>(D)\u00a0called for censorship<\/a>\u00a0to \u201csilence the voices of hatred and racism.\u201d After the Uvalde massacre, some Democrats renewed calls for everything from\u00a0court packing<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0ending the Senate filibuster<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most immediate response, however, was a call for gun bans. Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris\u00a0<\/a><\/span>got out front of the White House by\u00a0demanding a ban on AR-15s<\/a>, the most popular weapon in America.\u00a0Then President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0<\/a><\/span>created a stir by suggesting he might seek to\u00a0ban 9mm weapons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such calls are not limited to the United States.\u00a0Canadian Prime Minister\u00a0Justin Trudeau announced<\/a>\u00a0that his government is introducing legislation to \u201cimplement a national freeze on handgun ownership.\u201d He said Canadians would no longer be able \u201cto buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada,\u201d adding that \u201cthere is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The difference between the push in the two countries is the existence of the Second Amendment in the United States \u2014 a constitutionally mandated \u201creason\u201d why Americans are allowed to have guns; they don\u2019t have to prove it to the government.<\/p>\n

While the White House subsequently\u00a0tried to walk back<\/a>\u00a0his comments, Biden saying there\u2019s \u201cno rational basis<\/a>\u201d to own 9mms and AR-15s sounds like he\u2019s channeling his inner Canadian.<\/p>\n

There is now\u00a0a strong majority<\/a>\u00a0for gun control reforms. However, politicians are once again ignoring what is constitutionally possible by focusing on what is politically popular with their voting base.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the past, politicians in cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have proven to be the gun lobby\u2019s greatest asset. They have\u00a0pushed ill-considered legislation and litigation<\/a>\u00a0that only served to create precedent against gun control. The same pattern seems to be playing out as leaders like Biden and Harris voice sweeping, unsupportable statements about guns and constitutional protections. For example, despite being repeatedly corrected, President Biden continues to\u00a0repeat the same false statements<\/a>\u00a0about bans on weapons when the Second Amendment was ratified.<\/p>\n

Those false statements can be dismissed as\u00a0just another \u201cCorn Pop\u201d story<\/a>, but they refer to the constitutional foundation for gun control. This concern is magnified by other recent claims that would quickly collapse in court. For example, in support of the ban on AR-15s, Harris declared: \u201cDo you know what an assault weapon is? It was designed for a specific purpose, to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war, with no place, no place in a civil society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courts do not interpret the Constitution by soundbites but, rather, by sound historical and textual arguments. Courts likely would press the Biden administration on why it is seeking to ban this model when other higher-caliber weapons are sold. AR-15s can handle a variety of calibers. However,\u00a0they are no more powerful than other semi-automatic rifles of the same caliber and actually have a lower caliber than some commonly sold weapons which use .30-06, .308 and .300 ammunition; many of these guns fire at the same \u2014 or near the same rate \u2014 as the AR-15. None of these weapons are classified as actual military \u201cassault weapons,\u201d and most civilians cannot own an automatic weapon.<\/p>\n

President Biden showed the same disconnect as Harris between the factual and the rhetorical basis for some gun-control measures. He condemned\u00a0\u201chigh-caliber weapons\u201d like 9mm handguns and said \u201ca .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out \u2014 may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

While\u00a0gun experts mocked<\/a>\u00a0the notion that 9mm rounds blow organs out of bodies, the president\u2019s singling out of these handguns led many to cry foul about using the Uvalde massacre to impose a Canadian-like ban or moratorium. The 9mm round is the most popular handgun caliber in the U.S., with more than half of all handguns produced in 2019 using that round, according to\u00a0Shooting Industry<\/a>\u00a0magazine. If Biden pushed a ban, he would target more than 40 percent of all pistols produced in the U.S.<\/p>\n

In addition to repeating (for\u00a0the second time in two days<\/a>) a false claim that certain weapons were banned at the ratification of the Second Amendment, Biden made the claim that an assault weapons ban in the 1990s \u201csignificantly cut down mass murders.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is small support for saying that earlier ban on assault weapons had any appreciable impact on mass murders; there is no support for saying it caused a reduction in gun violence overall.\u00a0Thankfully, mass shootings are statistically rare. Even studies that noted a drop in mass shootings during this earlier period noted that such a cause-and-effect claim is\u00a0\u201cinconclusive.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Moreover, the earlier ban was imposed in 1994 \u2014 before the Supreme Court ruled in\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller\u00a0<\/a>that the right to bear arms is an individual right. Any such ban today would face a far greater court challenge and would require a far more compelling factual foundation to pass constitutional muster.<\/p>\n

While making these dubious claims,\u00a0President Biden stressed<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cI can\u2019t dictate this stuff \u2026 I can\u2019t outlaw a weapon.\u201d He added: \u201cI think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it. At least, that\u2019s my hope and prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is room for rational reforms, ranging from better funding of mental illness treatment to \u201cred flag\u201d laws. However, a \u201chope and prayer\u201d is unlikely to succeed if the president continues to inject hype and politics into our national debate over gun control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s Inner Trudeau: On Guns, the President seems to be Operating Under the Wrong Constitution Below is my\u00a0column in The Hill\u00a0on the calls for gun bans after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. The massacre has already been used as the basis for calls to end the filibuster, pack the court, limits on gun ownership, and … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81908,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81907\/revisions\/81908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}