Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was in Hudson, New Hampshire, on Sunday and made a slew of statements that derided gun ownership, even promising to sue gun manufacturers for “all the havoc they have caused.”
“There is a Second Amendment and you do have a right to bear arms, but not an unlimited right. No amendment is absolute,” Biden told the cheering crowd.
“Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line,” the former vice president said. “Well, guess what? The fact is if you’re going to take on the government, you need an F-15 with Hellfire missiles. There’s no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you if you’re going to take on — you’re worried about the government knocking down your door.”
Biden: "Those who say 'the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots' -- a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you."
2,816 people are talking about this
Biden decried current firearm laws, saying, “We’re unwilling to have a rational policy that says you cannot have 20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon.”
Democrat Joe Biden says that a "rational policy" on guns means making sure “you cannot have 20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon.”
1,460 people are talking about this
It was unclear exactly what he meant as “50 clips” does not match any firearm configuration.
The gun gaffe was certainly not his first. The former vice president has made similar mistakes during Democratic debates and on the campaign trail.
Biden also said he would work to sue gun manufacturers for “all the havoc they have caused.”
“One thing to get their attention is say, ‘I’m going to hold you responsible for the carnage you’re keeping,'” he said.
He made no mention as to whether hammer and knife manufacturers would be next on that list.
Biden’s slights and flubs are not simply tossed at firearm policy here. He is teasing outright prohibition, from repealing the Second Amendment that is not “absolute” to suing gun makers into closure, bankruptcy or extinction.
Throwing shade at resisting an ever-expanding government with an unfortunate history of dehumanizing bureaucracy is to slur everyday Americans. And that includes government folks that Biden inadvertently describes as insurmountable foes — will F-15 fighter jets be used against Americans? I’m pretty sure his poll numbers just dropped among F-15 pilots.
Americans who respect the Second Amendment recognize that our country’s legacies of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be fully embraced unless we can secure them from threat and defend them from harm.
Biden may want to prohibit weapons with “50 clips” — whatever that may be. But a people cannot vanquish its life-protecting tools and fully embrace its right to life. Any right we cannot defend is no longer a right.
If there are no individual means to defend life with capable and dependable firearm technology, then there is no right to life itself. This is true of every right, be it privacy, speech, association, worship or firearm ownership — ban the tool, ban the protections, and you de facto ban the right.
Biden’s ham-fisted attacks are only taken seriously by those who have not thought clearly on the subject. Relying on authorities for our personal security disregards their failures to do so practically and logistically — law enforcement officers simply cannot be everywhere they are needed when they are needed there.
This reality highlights the privilege and burden of individual sovereignty: No one can be relied upon to protect you and yours. Arguing for policy that all but denies this obligation and cedes it to authorities is both critically ignorant of the facts and dishonest about the consequences.
Firearms safeguard law and order every day — far more than they have ever disrupted it. Gun violence has always been an aberration, just like violence perpetrated with a hammer or knife.
Americans would no sooner ban medicine and medical care that prodigiously cost hundreds of thousands of lives every year because of their misapplication, misdiagnosis and malpractice. It is from this context that Americans can make our peace with both medical care and firearms: Life always trumps death.
Biden ought to reread the original Thomas Jefferson extract that he so flippantly quotes to disregard any thought of curtailing government overreach.
Jefferson’s sentiments are the eloquent, wise and plain-speaking thoughts of the common man who yearns for liberty against those who would deny him. They are as true today as they were 230 years ago:
“What country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
Would the 20th century, the bloodiest on record, have embraced such notions full-throatedly, perhaps the genocides of the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Nazi-controlled Europe, tribal Africa and communist Korea and Southeast Asia might never have occurred.
The first act in each of those morality plays was to disarm the populace.
Post a Comment