President Joe Biden looks on as Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks during a Medal of Valor ceremony, Monday, May 16, 2022, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
For decades Democrats have demonized sporting rifles, America’s most popular long guns, as “assault weapons,” despite these firearms being used in a minuscule percentage of crimes involving guns. Now, Shotgun Joe Biden and his Democratic Party are sending a signal that “assault weapons” are no longer their target. Instead, they want to come after an even broader swatch of Americans’ legally owned firearms, semiautomatics. If you’re not familiar with guns, semiautomatics make up a majority percentage of American firearms, including nearly all modern pistols. At Spectator World, Teresa Mull explains Biden’s new wording, writing:
President Biden just said he wants to “get rid of” tens of millions of firearms owned by law-abiding Americans. Biden, of course, is not known for making sense when it comes to guns (this was true even pre-senility), but his latest rant can’t be dismissed as another glitch in the ol’ gaffe machine.
“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no social redeeming values. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturer,” Biden said on Thanksgiving Day. He added, “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”
Congressman Mark Alford of Missouri called his words “sheer ignorance,” and Breitbart editor Emma-Jo Morris tweeted that Biden “clearly doesn’t know what semi-auto is.” I don’t buy it. Biden has been calling for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” for years, and like a bad guy at the end of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, he’s finally taking off his gun grabber mask.
The question that never gets answered, of course, is what exactly constitutes a so-called “assault weapon.” The term is intentionally and dangerously vague. The NRA has labeled it “a meaningless and politically elastic term.” There’s a reason so many of Biden’s appointees have been unable or unwilling to define it.
By definition, every weapon is made for assaulting someone or something. It’s the equivalent of referring to a “sleep bed” or a “drive car” or a “dig shovel.” People who understand firearms and actually use them have been explaining the true definition of an assault weapon with the repetitive fortitude of Mike Lindell. We should all know by now that the “AR” in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle.” It stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” the company that pioneered the AR-15.
We should also all know that “assault weapon,” until the left perverted the term, referred to a gun with selective fire capabilities, meaning you can switch it from automatic fire to semiautomatic fire. These types of weapons are largely reserved for military usage (true “military-style” weapons). They are not for sale at your local gun store, and acquiring one as a civilian is very costly and difficult to do, as they’ve been heavily regulated since the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934.
Even Joe Biden must know these basic facts, yet he and fellow liberals insist on using the term “assault weapon” to refer to any gun they’d like to see banned. Which is all of them. And Biden just admitted to that by saying there’s no reason to own a semiautomatic weapon. As many have pointed out, “most modern guns” are semiautomatic. The NRA notes, “Semi-automatic pistols are America’s favorite category of firearm. Moreover, pistols chambered in Biden’s dreaded 9mm are the most popular pistol in this category.”
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