Gun control rests on lies

Gun control is all the rage today, after two mass shootings last month, about a week apart. Naturally, President Joe Biden made a speech on the subject. In that speech he told three specific lies. Did he think no one would bother to check up on those lies? Possibly – because anyone who did check out his statements, would easily find them false. And a case that rests on lies is no case at all.

First gun control lie: you couldn’t own a cannon during the American Revolution

Here you can see the interview Joe Biden gave:

The first gun control lie worth taking up is his statement that

You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.

According to PolitiFact, that statement lacks any foundation. Even historians of the period could find no law, custom or tradition that limited the guns anyone could privately own. Furthermore, many historians cited one specific class of people who could and did own artillery pieces.

A privateer is any warship, not part of a regular navy, but under private ownership and command. Privateers operated under a specific kind of license called a letter of marque and reprisal. When James Madison proposed his twelve Amendments to the Constitution (ten of which passed as the Bill of Rights), the Constitution specifically granted Congress the power to issue such licenses. On that ground alone, privateers existed. And all privateers, being warships, carried artillery. Because a privateer is a private vessel, everything on it is also under private ownership. So we do see private individuals or groups owning cannons. Scratch Gun Control Lie Number One.

Second lie: a 9-mm bullet would blow out your lung

Later in the interview, Biden actually made a dubious distinction between a .22 caliber bullet and a 9-mm bullet.

The .22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lungs and we can get it out. A 9-mm bullet blows the lung out of the body. There’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self protection [or] hunting.

Two different Twitter users caught the lie – or, more charitably, the error:

One of CNAV’s own sources, who is a firearms expert, has already told CNAV that a 9-mm bullet will pass directly through a person. Such a weapon has no stopping power unless it hits the heart, the brain, the aorta, or similar target. The handgun with the real stopping power is the .45 Magnum, the one Clint Eastwood, as “Dirty Harry Callahan,” made famous in a series of movies featuring that iconic character.

Seeing as how this is a .45 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and can blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself: do I feel lucky today?

Yet people prefer the 9-mm handgun because they find it easier to handle and use. A President who makes such a wildly inaccurate statement about it, either doesn’t know his subject, or doesn’t care. Probably the latter – because he doesn’t want anyone to protect himself.

Third lie: the Second Amendment is not absolute

Which brings us to the third gun control lie: that the Second Amendment is not and never was absolute.

To review the text:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The first part of that sentence is an absolute phrase. It gives a statement of fact, not a condition or a supposition. The second statement does depend on the first, which gives the reason for the second. So in simple sentences, the Second Amendment might as well read:

A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State. Therefore the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The Supreme Court came to a belated recognition of that fact in 2010, with the two Heller cases. Faced with that, the Democrats want to amend it away. Or else they want to enlarge the Supreme Court. They then could appoint six more Sonia Sotomayors to vote, nine to six, to forbid private ownership of firearms.

This must be what President Ronald Reagan meant when he said freedom was always one generation away from extinction. CNAV urges all voters to remember that in the upcoming Midterms, and every election to come.