On Thursday night, Democrat President Joe Biden gave a speech calling for restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment rights while also claiming it wasn’t “about taking away anyone’s rights.”
“The Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute,” Biden said, prompting concern over his perspective on the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery.
“There have always been limitations on what weapons you can own in America. For example, machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years,” Biden said, using the first federal gun law that was passed in 1934 as the example for his false claim that federal gun restrictions have always existed. This false claim has been made by Biden repeatedly in the past, earning him “Four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post in 2021 and a “False” label from PolitiFact in 2020.
“This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights,” Biden said before listing the restrictions he wants to place on gun rights.
“We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” he said. “And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21. Strengthen background checks. Enact safe storage laws and red-flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability. Address the mental health crisis deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence.”
“These are rational, commonsense measures. And here’s what it all means. It all means this: We should reinstate the assault weapons ban and high-capacity magazines that we passed in 1994 with bipartisan support in Congress and the support of law enforcement. Nine categories of semi-automatic weapons were included in that ban, like AK-47s and AR-15s. And in the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down,” Biden said, referencing the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban which had no effect on gun homicide rates and a 2014 study found “murder rates were 19.3% higher when the Federal ban was in effect.” Additionally, school shootings actually increased after the ban was passed.
