(TargetLiberty.org) – President Biden gave his first speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, April 28. As one might expect, he filled it with the usual exaggerations and falsehoods one has come to expect from Democratic presidents. In fact, National Review debunked one of his claims before he even gave his speech using excerpts distributed to the media ahead of time.
Biden zeroed in on gun control during the speech, building on his earlier executive actions targeting the Second Amendment. He began by preying on people’s emotions, talking about mass shootings and the number of Americans “shot dead in the streets of America” so far this year. He also stated he would do everything in his power to “protect” the nation from its “epidemic of gun violence.”
Continuing, he called on Senate Republicans to join Democrat-led efforts to ban high-capacity magazines and assault rifles. “We did it before,” he proclaimed. According to him, those kinds of “reasonable reforms” have the support of the American people. Really?
Should Gun Owners Be Concerned?
The short answer is “no.”
Biden already announced six initial actions his administration was taking to address gun violence on April 7. Taken individually or as a whole, they do little to curb gun rights. In fact, the only action that even approached a restriction of any kind was a directive for the Justice Department to issue a “proposed RULE” to help prevent the increasing production of “ghost guns,” guns without serial numbers built using kits.
Biden has given no indication he intends to issue any further executive directives, hence the reason for his plea for Congress to act. Passage of any gun control measure in the Senate would require a supermajority, and that likely isn’t going to happen.
As things currently stand, Democrats already have to negotiate with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to get bills through the Senate requiring a simple majority. Vanity Fair recently reported that Manchin “could single-handedly throttle the Democratic agenda.”
Yes, it’s important to keep alert about upcoming measures restricting Second Amendment rights. But, with the Senate split 50/50 and Manchin vowing to protect the filibuster, there’s little cause for much concern — at least for now.
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