President Joe Biden called for stricter gun control legislation during his Wednesday address, claiming the Second Amendment allows for limitations on firearm ownership.
The president made the remarks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed 19 children and 2 teachers. He announced his future visit to Texas alongside First Lady Jill Biden.
“As a nation, we must all be there for them. Everyone. And we must ask when in God’s name will we do what needs to be done to if not completely stop, fundamentally change the amount of the carnage that goes on in this country,” Biden said. “I’m sick and tired. I’m just sick and tired of what’s going on and continues to go on.”
He touted his push to pass “common sense gun reforms” while serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as vice president, urging for these gun control laws to pass in order to have “a significant impact” on the number of tragedies occurring throughout the country.
“While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will have significant impact and have no negative impact on the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. There’s always been limitations. These actions we’ve taken before, they save lives and they can do it again. The idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is I think just wrong. It just violates common sense.” (RELATED: Psaki: ‘No One Is Talking About Overturning Or Changing The Second Amendment’)
Biden has repeated the false claim that a cannon could not be legally purchased when the Second Amendment was ratified. He made the claim last month when he announced his administration’s new regulation that requires background checks and serial numbers for so-called “ghost guns,” which refer to firearms that are unregulated and untraceable.
He made the same claim during his 2020 presidential campaign in a push to require background checks on all gun sales and impose a ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. The Washington Post gave his claim four Pinocchios, confirming that private citizens owned cannons at the time of the nation’s founding and that there was no federal law restricting the types of guns citizens could own.
He then moved the claim to apply to 20 years after the Revolutionary War, which is incorrect, according to the Washington Post. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war and “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” meaning that private citizens could be granted special waivers to own warships and obtain cannons during a battle.
