![By Larry Keane President Joe Biden traveled to New York City for a media event to try and show America he’s doing something about rampant crime. Instead, he blamed the Second Amendment and lawful gun owners, said nothing about holding criminals to account and repeated the same tired lies about the firearm industry he keeps at the ready – lies “fact-checked” as being false each time he’s previously recited them. It makes no difference to the president. He’s not even trying anymore. To President Biden and national gun control groups the problem is always the gun and the law-abiding members of the industry. It’s never the criminal. Blaming the ‘Resistance’ President Biden was joined by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams for a “Gun Violence Strategies Partnership” meeting to talk about how to solve the crime surge, particularly those involving firearms. Instead of real solutions, the focus devolved into blaming law-abiding gun owners and again pushing a gun control agenda. “Enough is enough,” President Biden said. “Because we know we can do things about this, but for the resistance, we’re getting from some sectors of the government and the Congress and the state legislatures, and the organizational structures out there.” That “resistance” the president spoke of is the American people. Over the past two years they’ve become fed up with police defunding policies and soft-on-crime prosecutors, like Manhattan’s Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They’ve invested in their own safety. The “resistance” is the 21 million lawful gun buyers in 2020, including more than 8.4 million first-time buyers, and the 18.5 million gun buyers in 2021, with more than 5.4 million first-timers. The ”resistance” has backstopped Congress from passing federal gun control that don’t address crime. It also stopped President Biden’s nominations of paid gun control lobbyist David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and banking activist Saule Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency because not even all U.S. Senate Democrats could support them. They would have turned those agencies into bludgeons to hammer the firearm industry to achieve a special interest, gun control agenda. Favorite Falsehoods The president turned his aim from lawful gun owners towards the firearm industry and repeated a lie he’s rehearsed several times before. “Imagine had we had a liabil… [sic] they’re the only industry in America that is exempted from being able to be sued by the public. Only one,” the president protested. “Why the gun manufacturers?… It’s got to end. They’ve got to be held responsible for the things they do that are irresponsible.” He repeated the claim for emphasis. “And I find that outrageous.” This is flatly false. The president knows by now, or his speechwriters do and they don’t bother with the facts. CNN, Politicfact and Washington Post have all checked President Biden on his remark, including after he said it in the White House Rose Garden. CNN cleanly rebuked it. “This is false. Gun manufacturers are not entirely exempt from being sued, nor are they only industry with some liability protections.” Politifact rated it “false.” Washington Post wasn’t kinder, saying, “Biden is wrong to claim the gun industry is totally immune.” The firearm industry has liability protections under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), bipartisan legislation enacted under former President George W. Bush. The firearm industry cannot be held liable when unaffiliated third-parties, in this case criminals, misuse a legal, lawfully sold product. It’s fundamental tort law and is similar to an individual attempting to hold Ford and Budweiser responsible for drunk driving deaths. The law was passed in direct response to lawsuits filed against the industry by control groups and municipalities like the city of New York and the state of New York. These type of lawsuit continue to be filed, now even by foreign governments represented by the same gun control group, the Brady Center. Colonial-Era Error President Biden continued to ignore facts on the Second Amendment and its history. He even erred when speaking about the Revolution-era days and why the right to keep and bear arms was so sacrosanct. “When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody could own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” President Biden remarked. “You couldn’t buy a cannon, and when – the – when this, uh, this amendment was passed.” It did, and does, say the right of the People “shall not be infringed.” Even The Washington Post was brutal in their assignment of “Four Pinocchio’s” to this statement. “Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.” In fact, the Constitution of early America – before the Bill of Rights, and Second Amendment, was even ratified – granted and encouraged “special waivers” to American merchants and sailors, “allowing private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it.” Americans given waivers and who owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle. In fact, it is still perfectly legal to buy a cannon today. It is the presidents’ fundamental misunderstanding and blatant lying about the Second Amendment that informs his gun control agenda and misguided approach to solving the crime problem. Millions of law-abiding Americans took ownership of their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves, understanding the president won’t. Instead of mangling the meaning of the right and pushing for more gun control on law-abiding Americans, the president should keep it simple. Take on the criminals and punish them for breaking the law.](https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/download-26.jpeg "false truth-o-meter politifact fact check")
The legacy media has largely given up the pretense of finishing up its once-professed mission – holding energy to account. At this level, no cheap particular person expects the regime press to cowl legit information that may replicate poorly on their political allies. Nonetheless, conspicuous ignorance is one factor, distortion is one other.
At an August 3 marketing campaign rally in Atlanta, President Donald Trump instructed these gathered that Vice President Kamala Harris “helps obligatory gun confiscation.” On August 7, the ill-named PolitiFact rated Trump’s assertion “largely false.”
As NRA-ILA has commonly documented, Trump is appropriate. Harris has repeatedly supported prohibiting and confiscating commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, together with America’s hottest rifle – the AR-15.
At a 2020 presidential marketing campaign occasion in Londonderry, N.H. in September 2019, then-presidential candidate Harris instructed reporters that confiscation of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms was “a good suggestion.” Elaborating on her help for a obligatory “buyback” program, the senator added, “We’ve to work out the small print — there are quite a lot of particulars — however I do…We’ve to take these weapons off the streets.”
On the September 16, 2019 episode of “The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Harris reiterated her help for gun confiscation. Throughout a question-and-answer session, an viewers member requested Harris “Do you consider within the obligatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not or not you do, how does that concept not go in opposition to basically the Second Modification?”
The candidate responded, “I do consider that we have to do buybacks.” Making clear that she believes Individuals’ Second Modification rights are on the market, Harris added “A buyback program is a good suggestion. Now we have to do it the correct method. And a part of that must be, you understand, purchase again and provides folks their worth, the monetary worth.”
Additional demonstrating Harris’s dedication to gun confiscation, the candidate known as for a “obligatory buyback program” throughout an October 3, 2019 MSNBC gun management discussion board and once more throughout a November 2019 interview with NBC Nightly Information.
Given Harris’s apparent and indeniable document of help for gun confiscation, an inexpensive particular person may surprise how a information outlet may rebut Trump’s correct assertion. PolitiFact’s lazy reasoning boiled all the way down to: That was then, that is now. And PolitiFact’s sole piece of “proof” for his or her conclusion? Lower than a sentence from a New York Occasions article that cited Harris “marketing campaign officers.”
So, Individuals can both consider the precise presidential candidate’s repeated requires gun confiscation in her personal phrases on video or a second-hand account of what a marketing campaign official supposedly stated to a regime press outlet a few purported flip-flop on an unpopular coverage. Are Individuals presupposed to consider so-called “factcheckers” are this gullible, or is there one thing else at play? There’s a cause statements in opposition to curiosity are given particular weight in courtroom.
Furthermore, whereas PolitiFact could wish to painting 2019 as historic historical past, there’s newer proof that Harris helps gun confiscation. Noticeably absent from the PolitiFact piece was any point out of Harris’s October 26, 2023 remarks at a state luncheon with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Harris praised Australia’s gun management measures – essentially the most well-known of which was the Aussie equal of Harris’s gun confiscation proposal. Referencing violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris remarked, “And allow us to be clear, it doesn’t need to be this fashion, as our associates in Australia have demonstrated.” (emphasis added).
In 1996, Australia adopted a close to complete ban on civilian possession of semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. To coincide with the brand new restrictions, the federal government instituted a compulsory “buyback” confiscation scheme the place gun homeowners had been required to show their newly-prohibited firearms over to the federal government for a set value.
Fortunately, fewer and fewer Individuals are counting on the regime press to mediate actuality. In October, Gallup reported the outcomes of a current ballot, stating,
The 32% of Individuals who say they belief the mass media “an incredible deal” or “a good quantity” to report the information in a full, honest and correct method ties Gallup’s lowest historic studying, beforehand recorded in 2016.
One other 29% of U.S. adults have “not very a lot” belief, whereas a record-high 39% register “none in any respect.”
On June 26, the Washington Submit revealed a bit titled “A brand new measure of Individuals’ deep mistrust of the media.” The merchandise defined,
Individuals merely don’t belief the media, notably relating to politics. Swing-state polling from The Washington Submit and the Schar Faculty of Coverage and Authorities at George Mason College discovered that solely 3 in 10 residents of six of an important states on this yr’s presidential election belief that the media will pretty and precisely report political information. Seven in 10 indicated that they’d not an excessive amount of belief in that occurring — or that they’d no belief in any respect.
The notion that the legacy press is unbiased is kind of actually laughable. A visual manifestation of this sentiment occurred on the August 12 episode of “The Late Present with Stephen Colbert.” Viewers members burst into laughter when the host, in all seriousness, instructed that CNN is goal.
With the regime press dropping all semblance of credibility, NRA members and different gun rights activists ought to work even more durable to share the information about concerning the risks Harris poses to the Second Modification and gun possession with their household, associates, neighbors, and different freedom-minded people.
—Courtesy NRA-ILA
