![By Larry Keane President Joe Biden traveled to New York City for a media event to try and show America he’s doing something about rampant crime. Instead, he blamed the Second Amendment and lawful gun owners, said nothing about holding criminals to account and repeated the same tired lies about the firearm industry he keeps at the ready – lies “fact-checked” as being false each time he’s previously recited them. It makes no difference to the president. He’s not even trying anymore. To President Biden and national gun control groups the problem is always the gun and the law-abiding members of the industry. It’s never the criminal. Blaming the ‘Resistance’ President Biden was joined by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams for a “Gun Violence Strategies Partnership” meeting to talk about how to solve the crime surge, particularly those involving firearms. Instead of real solutions, the focus devolved into blaming law-abiding gun owners and again pushing a gun control agenda. “Enough is enough,” President Biden said. “Because we know we can do things about this, but for the resistance, we’re getting from some sectors of the government and the Congress and the state legislatures, and the organizational structures out there.” That “resistance” the president spoke of is the American people. Over the past two years they’ve become fed up with police defunding policies and soft-on-crime prosecutors, like Manhattan’s Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They’ve invested in their own safety. The “resistance” is the 21 million lawful gun buyers in 2020, including more than 8.4 million first-time buyers, and the 18.5 million gun buyers in 2021, with more than 5.4 million first-timers. The ”resistance” has backstopped Congress from passing federal gun control that don’t address crime. It also stopped President Biden’s nominations of paid gun control lobbyist David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and banking activist Saule Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency because not even all U.S. Senate Democrats could support them. They would have turned those agencies into bludgeons to hammer the firearm industry to achieve a special interest, gun control agenda. Favorite Falsehoods The president turned his aim from lawful gun owners towards the firearm industry and repeated a lie he’s rehearsed several times before. “Imagine had we had a liabil… [sic] they’re the only industry in America that is exempted from being able to be sued by the public. Only one,” the president protested. “Why the gun manufacturers?… It’s got to end. They’ve got to be held responsible for the things they do that are irresponsible.” He repeated the claim for emphasis. “And I find that outrageous.” This is flatly false. The president knows by now, or his speechwriters do and they don’t bother with the facts. CNN, Politicfact and Washington Post have all checked President Biden on his remark, including after he said it in the White House Rose Garden. CNN cleanly rebuked it. “This is false. Gun manufacturers are not entirely exempt from being sued, nor are they only industry with some liability protections.” Politifact rated it “false.” Washington Post wasn’t kinder, saying, “Biden is wrong to claim the gun industry is totally immune.” The firearm industry has liability protections under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), bipartisan legislation enacted under former President George W. Bush. The firearm industry cannot be held liable when unaffiliated third-parties, in this case criminals, misuse a legal, lawfully sold product. It’s fundamental tort law and is similar to an individual attempting to hold Ford and Budweiser responsible for drunk driving deaths. The law was passed in direct response to lawsuits filed against the industry by control groups and municipalities like the city of New York and the state of New York. These type of lawsuit continue to be filed, now even by foreign governments represented by the same gun control group, the Brady Center. Colonial-Era Error President Biden continued to ignore facts on the Second Amendment and its history. He even erred when speaking about the Revolution-era days and why the right to keep and bear arms was so sacrosanct. “When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody could own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” President Biden remarked. “You couldn’t buy a cannon, and when – the – when this, uh, this amendment was passed.” It did, and does, say the right of the People “shall not be infringed.” Even The Washington Post was brutal in their assignment of “Four Pinocchio’s” to this statement. “Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.” In fact, the Constitution of early America – before the Bill of Rights, and Second Amendment, was even ratified – granted and encouraged “special waivers” to American merchants and sailors, “allowing private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it.” Americans given waivers and who owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle. In fact, it is still perfectly legal to buy a cannon today. It is the presidents’ fundamental misunderstanding and blatant lying about the Second Amendment that informs his gun control agenda and misguided approach to solving the crime problem. Millions of law-abiding Americans took ownership of their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves, understanding the president won’t. Instead of mangling the meaning of the right and pushing for more gun control on law-abiding Americans, the president should keep it simple. Take on the criminals and punish them for breaking the law.](https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/download-26.jpeg "false truth-o-meter politifact fact check")
The legacy media has mostly given up the pretense of carrying out its once-professed mission – holding power to account. At this point, no reasonable person expects the regime press to cover legitimate news that might reflect poorly on their political allies. Still, conspicuous ignorance is one thing, distortion is another.
At an August 3 campaign rally in Atlanta, President Donald Trump told those gathered that Vice President Kamala Harris “supports mandatory gun confiscation.” On August 7, the ill-named PolitiFact rated Trump’s statement “mostly false.”
As NRA-ILA has regularly documented, Trump is correct. Harris has repeatedly supported prohibiting and confiscating commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, including America’s most popular rifle – the AR-15.
At a 2020 presidential campaign event in Londonderry, N.H. in September 2019, then-presidential candidate Harris told reporters that confiscation of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms was “a good idea.” Elaborating on her support for a compulsory “buyback” program, the senator added, “We have to work out the details — there are a lot of details — but I do…We have to take those guns off the streets.”
On the September 16, 2019 episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Harris reiterated her support for gun confiscation. During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked Harris “Do you believe in the mandatory buyback of quote-unquote assault weapons and whether or not you do, how does that idea not go against fundamentally the Second Amendment?”
The candidate responded, “I do believe that we need to do buybacks.” Making clear that she believes Americans’ Second Amendment rights are for sale, Harris added “A buyback program is a good idea. Now we need to do it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back and give people their value, the financial value.”
Further demonstrating Harris’s commitment to gun confiscation, the candidate called for a “mandatory buyback program” during an October 3, 2019 MSNBC gun control forum and again during a November 2019 interview with NBC Nightly News.
Given Harris’s obvious and indisputable record of support for gun confiscation, a reasonable person might wonder how a news outlet could rebut Trump’s accurate statement. PolitiFact’s lazy reasoning boiled down to: That was then, this is now. And PolitiFact’s sole piece of “evidence” for their conclusion? Less than a sentence from a New York Times article that cited Harris “campaign officials.”
So, Americans can either believe the actual presidential candidate’s repeated calls for gun confiscation in her own words on video or a second-hand account of what a campaign official supposedly said to a regime press outlet about a purported flip-flop on an unpopular policy. Are Americans supposed to believe so-called “factcheckers” are this gullible, or is there something else at play? There is a reason statements against interest are given special weight in court.
Moreover, while PolitiFact may want to portray 2019 as ancient history, there’s more recent evidence that Harris supports gun confiscation. Noticeably absent from the PolitiFact piece was any mention of Harris’s October 26, 2023 remarks at a state luncheon with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Harris praised Australia’s gun control measures – the most famous of which was the Aussie equivalent of Harris’s gun confiscation proposal. Referencing violence perpetrated with firearms, Harris remarked, “And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.” (emphasis added).
In 1996, Australia adopted a near total ban on civilian ownership of semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. To coincide with the new restrictions, the government instituted a mandatory “buyback” confiscation scheme where gun owners were required to turn their newly-prohibited firearms over to the government for a set price.
Thankfully, fewer and fewer Americans are relying on the regime press to mediate reality. In October, Gallup reported the results of a recent poll, stating,
The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016.
Another 29% of U.S. adults have “not very much” trust, while a record-high 39% register “none at all.”
On June 26, the Washington Post published a piece titled “A new measure of Americans’ deep distrust of the media.” The item explained,
Americans simply don’t trust the media, particularly when it comes to politics. Swing-state polling from The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University found that only 3 in 10 residents of six of the most important states in this year’s presidential election trust that the media will fairly and accurately report political news. Seven in 10 indicated that they had not too much trust in that occurring — or that they had no trust at all.
The notion that the legacy press is unbiased is quite literally laughable. A visible manifestation of this sentiment occurred on the August 12 episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Audience members burst into laughter when the host, in all seriousness, suggested that CNN is objective.
With the regime press losing all semblance of credibility, NRA members and other gun rights activists should work even harder to share the facts about about the dangers Harris poses to the Second Amendment and gun ownership with their family, friends, neighbors, and other freedom-minded individuals.
—Courtesy NRA-ILA
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