Opinion
By Larry Keane
Wish they may, wish they might – gun control Democrats in Congress are still holding out hope President Joe Biden will deliver their biggest wish. What they shouldn’t hold is their breath.
More than 60 antigun Democrats from the U.S. House and U.S. Senate sent a scathing letter to the president imploring him to “leverage the full power of the executive branch” and implement more gun control.
The problem is Pres. Biden already conceded he’s “powerless” to go it alone.
‘He Better Understand’
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Abagail Spanberger (D-Va.), and more than 55 additional Members of Congress signed their names to the letter, which the president’s administration cooly said they’re “reviewing.”
“With Republicans in Congress refusing to act, the American people are relying on your Administration to ensure that they can move through their daily lives without fear of firearms on the streets, in public establishments, and in their homes,” the letter states, according to CNN. “We also believe you can exercise your executive authority to take additional action to address gun violence without congressional action.”
If the signatories weren’t aware, their pleas are likely falling on deaf ears and are in stark contrast with what President Biden previously told media and gun control activists.
“I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns,” the president said earlier this year. The New York Times described those comments as “stark” and a “surprising statement” by the president, “who essentially threw up his hands…”
Asked by media about signing the letter and if the president “understands the urgency” of unilaterally doing more, Rep. Spanberger shot back, “I mean, he better.”
Past is Present
Frustrations with the president among gun control activists have been simmering for a while. No action is good enough and there is always clamoring for more restrictions on law-abiding Americans rather than pushing for stricter enforcement of laws on the books or harsher penalties for the criminals causing the violence. When the president uttered his infamous comments back in March, CNN reported it “frustrated many in his own party.”
National gun control groups have repeatedly made their displeasure with the administration known. “He hasn’t really been a leader,” was the sentiment from March for Our Lives. Giffords gun control has said, “We would like to see more from the Biden administration.” Gun control activist Fred Guttenberg previously put the administration on notice regarding their powers of executive action, saying “They’ve done probably, through executive action, not everything they can do…”
The lawmakers now are hoping maybe one more nudge will get the president to budge, despite the fact that gun control Democrats held majorities in Congress for two years of President Biden’s term.
Kitchen Sink Demands
The letter from antigun lawmakers to the president is a laundry list of demands that might not be typical gun control wishes but would still do little to hold criminals accountable or punish soft-on-crime prosecutors who fail to keep their communities safe.
They specifically request that President Biden require firearm manufacturers with Defense Department contracts to adopt a “code of conduct,” which could include declining to sell “military-grade firearms” to civilians. What they mean is implementing a ban on the sale of Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) to civilians. MSRs, as the administration repeatedly lies about, are not military firearms, not automatic “weapons of war,” and are instead semiautomatic rifles, like the AR-15, that are the most popular selling semiautomatic rifles in the country. MSRs operate on the same one-trigger-pull-one-fire technology that has been in existence for more than a century, and that is common among numerous varieties of handguns and shotguns. Industry data shows that commonly-owned MSRs now number more than 24.4 million, making them more common than Ford F-150 pickup trucks on the road.
Other demands of the president urged him to re-evaluate the “sporting purposes” exception for firearm imports and undo the U.S. Munitions List to Commerce Control List (USML-CCL) reforms to transfer export authority from the Commerce Department back to the State Department. This proposal was originally started during former President Barack Obama’s presidency – with then-Vice President Joe Biden – and was later completed by former President Donald Trump.
They even push the president to press the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to restrict First Amendment rights by banning firearm advertising under “unfair and deceptive” practices and also undo Tiahrt Amendment protections for sensitive firearm trace data that would jeopardize law enforcement investigations and malign firearm manufacturers and retailers.
The president has received plenty of justifiable criticism, even from Congressional Democrats, when he has acted to impose unilateral restrictions on the Second Amendment and gets cute with misinterpreting law to pursue backdoor gun control.
Congress is refusing to pursue gun control activists’ agenda towards more Constitutional restrictions because the American people don’t want them to. In this case, these lawmakers would do well to listen to the president.
Democrat Letter to Biden on Executive Actions on Guns
About The National Shooting Sports Foundation
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I have to question the culpable mental state of some of those elected officials that signed the letter. I’m singling out Sen. Diane Feinstein particularly.
Does she understand what she’s signing? Further, did she sign that letter herself? Since her return to the Senate, in my opinion, it appears to me that she is incapable of performing simple tasks.
This letter these clowns signed holds just as much weight as the letter that claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation . Just a bunch of morons that are in denial of reality . All these lying criminals are proof you can’t fix stupid !
Congress cannot pass any Constitutional restrictions, as all are infringements (including the nfa, gca, and Hughes amendment, background checks, etc) and thus UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Antiprogs:
“Star light, star bright
first star I see tonight
I wish I may I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight
I wish for all guns in the world to vanish (Except for ours)”
<Nothing happens>
No good rotten f%^&*&^ b%$#$%^ star you…”
🙂
oh, i wish every signatory would hold their breath for as long as it takes for ol’ joe to do what they demand in violating our civil rights.
the reason they don’t want to push for more gun control is many informed voters will hold them accountable for actions like this. although many will still vote for the candidate with the d behind the name. they know ol’ joe will not make it through another election cycle and win the election, so this is their best shot at making it happen.
Wish they may, wish they might they are going to eat dirt when they start to fight. Can’t any democrap understand the constitution and what it really says. Really? So tired of their tired BS. They will never, ever get rid of all the guns and now they are pushing so far and so hard even their own non commonsense sheeple are starting to question their motive and don’t believe that the government actually cares about their safety or the children. Thank you New Mexico for making that a positive distinction. WTF Screw the dumb son of a bitch O’biden… Read more »