Biden claims Second Amendment is 'not absolute' in announcing a half-dozen gun control measures
White House forced to walk back a claim Biden made about purchases made a gun shows after he said no background check is required for those gun buys
On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced new executive actions on gun control, trying to limit “ghost guns” and to make it easier for people to flag their own family members who shouldn’t be allowed to purchase firearms. In announcing his gun restrictions, Biden specifically addressed the Second Amendment.
While Biden insisted that none of his gun control measures impinged on the Second Amendment, he also insisted that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.”
“Nothing, nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment. They’re phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake for what we’re talking about,” he argued.
He went on to claim that gun purchases at gun shows were not subject to background checks, which is patently false. The only types of transactions not subject to background checks are private sales between gun owners. Commercial offerings at gun shows must have a clean background check completed in order to be final.
Then came Biden’s key statement, one that leaves the door open for further tampering with our constitutional rights: “But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.”
“You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater. Recall the freedom of speech. From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons,” Biden argued. “So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution. Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.”
Biden did not cite any of the Founders to support his idea that gun rights had limits from the very beginning. In reality, they would take issue with Biden’s claims. For example, James Madison, the father of the Constitution assured Americans that the creation of a federal government would not involve the loss of this liberty.
“Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe,” Madison wrote in Federalist 46, “which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.”
James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers that an armed citizenry was vital to maintain the freedoms and liberties of a democratic republic, to protect it from totalitarianism. (Photo: National Archives)
The whole point Madison was making, according to historians, is that armed militias and local governments are a deterrent against an authoritarian national force.
Brewer master and patriot Samuel Adams said a Bill of Rights should include a guarantee that the “Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress … to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.”
While Americans generally agree that only “peaceable citizens” should bear arms, gun control measures often go further. Biden’s proposed “red flag law” would install the so-called Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) at the federal level and incentivize states to write similar measures. Nineteen states have red flag laws and most have been abused by family members or neighbors who have a dispute with the gun owners they target, as they falsely claim the gun owner is a “danger” to himself or others.
Biden also announced he is nominating David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. A former SWAT agent with the bureau, Chipman is a gun control advocate and adviser to former congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s gun control organization.
Chipman claimed in a Reddit post last year that members of the Branch Dividian religious cult shot down two Texas National Guard helicopters during the 1993 siege at Waco, Texas. While members of the cult did in fact shoot at the helicopters, none were shot down. Chipman was known as a “loose cannon” during his days at ATF and was encouraged to resign or race disciplinary action following an incident during a SWAT deployment in 2012.
Though the key aspects of Biden’s announcement Thursday dealt primarily with gun control, his statements seemed to embody constitutional amendments overall. It is apparent from his remarks that he may attempt to undermine other aspects of U.S. Constitution. He won’t stop with the Second Amendment.
Biden is laying the groundwork for carving out exceptions to key constitutional rights. It’s not just gun control: Biden supports the Obamacare contraception mandate and would remove religious freedom exemptions for Catholic nuns like the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Biden also supports the Equality Act, which explicitly undermines the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Biden supports H.R. 1, the Democrats’ election boondoggle that, among other things, eviscerates free speech in politics by mandating donor disclosure.
When Biden says “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute,” he isn’t just talking about the Second Amendment.