It may not happen in the first 100 days, but I guarantee you that at some point sooner rather than later, Joe will ask Congress to deliver a new gun-control bill to his desk. Not only did he mention gun control throughout his campaign, but he owes Mike Bloomberg for all the gelt that Mayor Mike dumped into the race.
The two issues floating around Gun-control Nation which could find their way into a new law are an extension of background checks to all personal gun transfers, and another assault weapons ban. Neither regulation, as far as I’m concerned, would do very much to reduce the 125,000 intentional gun injuries which occur every year. On the other hand, if you’re committed to reducing gun violence, there’s nothing wrong with passing another law.
What will be interesting when a gun starts to be discussed, will be the approach to the law taken by Joe. Why do I say that? Because Biden happens to be the one national politician from either party who has promoted the most beloved Gun-nut Nation issue of all, namely, the ‘right’ to use a gun for self-defense. He made this declaration during in 2013, and as far as I know, he has never backed down.
His defense of armed, self-defense came about in a public forum when he mentioned that he was frequently away from home and that he and Jill lived in an isolated, rural space. That being the case, he gave Jill a shotgun which was kept loaded near the front door. If anyone tried to break into the house, he told Jill to pick up the shotgun, fire a round into the air and the intruder would, for sure, take off and run away.
Now you would have thought that the next day that gun companies like Remington, Ithaca, Browning, Beretta, or other outfits that make and sell a million shotguns every year would have scheduled a meeting in Joe’s office and presented him and his wife with a new gun. That’s what I would have done if I owned a company that made shotguns. I’d be crazy not to use such an opportunity to get free publicity for my brand. And not only free publicity for my gun, but an opportunity to promote the God-given ‘right’ of every American to defend himself or herself with a gun.
What did Gun-nut Nation do when given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote 2nd-Amendment ‘rights?’ They couldn’t wait to line up and denounce Joe for what he had said. The idea was ‘stupid,’ it was ‘wrong,’ it allegedly violated some facockta Delaware law that prohibits individuals from shooting off a gun unless they are hunting or banging away at some shooting range.
And then there was the idiot, the so-called gun ‘expert’ who even said that by aiming the shotgun in the air and shooting off a round, that Jill would be endangering her neighbors because maybe one of the pellets would come back down and hit the neighbor on his head. Did this moron ever think about the millions of shotgun pellets that are fired each year in Delaware at all those high-flying geese and ducks going to Florida and then coming back?
The reason the gun industry jumped all over Joe Biden’s defense of gun ‘rights’ is because Democrats aren’t supposed to be in favor of gun ‘rights.’ If they were, this would remove one of the premier talking-points from the ideological quiver of the GOP.
Want to run for political office on the Republican line? You better be a foremost proponent of the 2nd Amendment and you better make sure to remind everyone that the Democrat you are running against wants to disarm you and all of your friends.
I don’t think it’s going to be quite so easy for the GOP to be the pro-gun party following the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill. So maybe my friends in Gun-nut Nation should begin thinking out of the box and consider whether Joe might become a friend.
I’m not holding my breath.