By Larry Keane
Late last week, The Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee confirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the official Democratic presidential ticket and, in doing so, ratified the official party issue platform. The first official 80 page public draft of the Party’s platform was released last month, which predictably included a short but informative two paragraphs about the Party and Biden’s unprecedented gun control platform.
Some of the measures detailed in their plan include criminalizing private firearm transfers, instituting endless “delay” windows for background checks, banning the manufacture and sale of modern sporting rifles, enacting licensing schemes to restrict Second Amendment rights, mandating home storage requirements under penalty of law, and repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to expose the industry to a deluge of baseless lawsuits intended to bankrupt gun companies.
This anti-Second Amendment platform, however, comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the disdain with which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both treat American gun owners. Last March, Detroit Union autoworker Jerry Wayne elicited shock from both Democrats and Republicans when he questioned Joe Biden on his Second Amendment views and was met with a flurry of insults from the former Vice President, who told Wayne “not to be such a horse’s ass,” and that he is “full of sh*t.”
Biden’s personal ignorance of the American firearm landscape runs deeper still. Biden has been a longtime advocate for the universally failed science behind “DNA-enabled smart guns.” Moreover, Biden has been an unabashed proponent of gun confiscation. When asked about “forced buybacks” by Anderson Cooper, Biden said “Bingo… You’re right, if you have an assault weapon. The fact of the matter is they should be illegal, period.” He has even said that he would appoint failed Presidential and Senate candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke as a gun control czar after the former Congressman said “Hell yes” when asked if he wants to confiscate legally owned modern sporting rifles such as the AR-15.
Biden’s new running mate, Kamala Harris, isn’t any better on gun rights. Not only does she also enthusiastically support all of the DNC’s gun control measures, she is also perfectly content to violate the Constitution to ensure they are put into effect. During the Democratic Primary debates, Harris laughed at the idea that a U.S. President cannot subvert Congress and take executive action on firearms. When asked if she would support such unilateral action, she continued to laugh and say “yes, we can.”
The convention this week, however, was the inflection point at which Biden’s radical gun control agenda became the official position of the Democratic Party. The DNC’s preference to rhetoric over fact is put on display, for example, by the anti-gunners desire to close the “Charleston Loophole” by eliminating the timeframe in which the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) must complete a check for a gun sale. The reality, however, is that 91 percent of all background checks are completed instantly and of the 9 percent that are delayed, 94 percent of those are completed within 10 days. The anti-Second Amendment activists inside the DNC know this but are using their hollow political rhetoric to push legislation that would create an avenue through which the government could arbitrarily deny firearm purchases at will by indefinitely delaying background checks. We know this because instead of following the current law, U.S. Senators tried to shut it down during the busiest firearm-buying period on record earlier this year.
Biden, Harris, and the DNC are still doubling down on modern sporting rifle bans even though evidence shows such a ban would have no meaningful impact on crime reduction, per evidence from the Center for Disease Control. Voters in 18 U.S. swing states also do not support such a ban as overwhelmingly as the Democratic Party would have you believe. Of those polled in those states, more than half responded they wouldn’t support a ban on modern sporting rifles and want politicians to respect individual rights and enforce laws presently on the books.
As the RNC convention starts this week, last week’s Democratic convention only confirmed what so many of us already knew; that the DNC is listening more to their radical base than to everyday Americans. Simply put, this is an agenda that is so far out of step with normal Americans that it is tripping over itself.
Lawrence Keane is the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry trade association.