{"id":88165,"date":"2022-11-29T13:33:44","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T19:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=88165"},"modified":"2022-11-29T13:33:44","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T19:33:44","slug":"88165","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=88165","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

We Don\u2019t Need Biden\u2019s Permission To Own A \u2018Semi-Automatic\u2019 Gun<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,\u201d Joe Biden\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0on Thanksgiving. \u201cIt has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Need it really be pointed out that it is perfectly within our rights to purchase products devoid of all socially redemptive value? Certainly, it is not the state\u2019s business to determine what we \u201cneed.\u201d That said, semi-automatic weapons happen to have an obvious redeeming value and there is a strong rationale for owning them. Semi-auto weapons are easy to use, and their effectiveness and reliability bolster the ability of people to protect themselves, their families, their property, and their community from criminality and, should it descend into tyranny, the government. Gun bans are autocratic and unconstitutional, and, thankfully, also largely unfeasible.<\/p>\n

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It is difficult to pinpoint what percentage of the 400-plus million firearms in civilian hands today are semi-automatic. These weapons, which fire one cartridge with a single trigger squeeze while preparing the gun for the next shot, constitute a substantial percentage of new gun sales over the past few decades. Banning them would prevent homeowners and those who concealed-carry<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 not only some of the most\u00a0law-abiding people<\/a>\u00a0in the country, but a\u00a0growing<\/a>\u00a0contingent \u2014without the weapon of choice. The actions of a small number of irrational criminal psychopaths should not corrode the rights of those citizens. Not to mention, corroding our rights would do nothing to stop the irrational criminal psychopaths.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Indeed, semi-autos meet every criterion of legality\u00a0laid out<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0D.C. v. Heller<\/em>, the decision that finally codified the clear historical and legal intention of the Second Amendment. Not only are semi-automatic weapons \u201cin common use\u201d by \u201claw-abiding citizens,\u201d they are not \u201cunusual.\u201d The first semi-automatic pistols\u00a0hit the civilian marketplace<\/a>\u00a0in the 1890s.<\/p>\n

Now, there is always the not-so-small chance that Biden has confused the real-world mechanical designation of \u201csemi-automatic\u201d with the political concoction of \u201cassault weapons.\u201d I\u2019m skeptical. Anyone who\u2019s involved in the gun debate knows that \u201csemi-automatic\u201d guns, often purposely conflated with the more dangerous \u201cautomatic\u201d weapons, are the target of restrictionists. A few years back during that shameful post-Parkland CNN gun \u201ctown hall<\/a>,\u201d the crowd loudly cheered at the suggestion of banning all \u201csemi-automatic\u201d rifles. And, earlier this year, the president suggested that ordinary citizens should be banned from owning popular \u201chigh-caliber\u201d 9mm handguns. \u201cSo the idea of these high-caliber weapons is of \u2014 there\u2019s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting,\u201d Biden said of the type of gun\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0by the Secret Service to protect him.<\/p>\n

It is, as it always has been in the gun debate, incrementalism. From \u201cno one wants to take your guns\u201d to \u201cwe only want to take some of them\u201d and so on. Of course, even if the president really intended to talk about a semi-automatic rifle ban, his goals would still be unconstitutional. Again, the gun meets every standard set by\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0for legality. And if the Senate somehow musters the 60 votes to push through the ban on certain semi-automatic guns recently\u00a0passed<\/a>\u00a0by the House, states should challenge the federal government, and, if need be, ignore it.<\/p>\n

Biden, who often imparts dreadful,\u00a0sometimes illegal<\/a>, advice on gun ownership, also has a\u00a0long history<\/a>\u00a0of saying completely inane, insane, and historically illiterate things about firearms \u2014whether cringingly noting that deer don\u2019t wear \u201cKevlar<\/a>\u201d or claiming\u00a0cannons<\/a>\u00a0were banned during the Revolutionary era as a way to\u00a0argue<\/a>\u00a0that the Second Amendment \u201clike all other rights, is not absolute.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the latter, Biden often (fittingly)\u00a0cites<\/a>\u00a0one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment,\u00a0Schenck v. United States<\/em>, which allowed the Woodrow Wilson administration to throw socialists into prison for speech crimes, to make his point. And perhaps that speaks to the crucial distinction at the heart of so many of our debates. Biden, and thus the contemporary left, seems to be under the impression that it\u2019s the state that \u201callows\u201d us to buy semi-automatic firearms or \u201callows\u201d us to say certain things. But we don\u2019t need their permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Don\u2019t Need Biden\u2019s Permission To Own A \u2018Semi-Automatic\u2019 Gun \u201cThe idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,\u201d Joe Biden\u00a0argued\u00a0on Thanksgiving. \u201cIt has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.\u201d Need it really be pointed out that it is … 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":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88165","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=88165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88166,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88165\/revisions\/88166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}