By Larry Keane
President Joe Biden ran on being a “listener,” and bringing “unity” and “healing” to America. He’s not listening though. His tone-deaf call for increased gun control – including an “assault weapons” ban — comes in the midst of a record-breaking firearm and ammunition buying surge and record low public appetite for gun control.
Instead of listening to voters, President Biden ignored them and is calling to ban the AR-15, or modern sporting rifle (MSR), and in doing so he’ll infringe the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.
21 Million Background Checks and Counting
Last year was historic for Americans buying firearms. They voted for the Second Amendment with their wallets at the gun retail counter. Of the more than 21 million background checks completed for a firearm sale, retailers estimated over 8.4 million were first-time buyers. That’s not slowing down in 2021. Data shows modern sporting rifles (MSRs) continue to be America’s most popular-selling centerfire rifle.
Even before the buying surge, NSSF reported that over 20 million MSRs are in circulation, being used daily for lawful purposes. These are clearly commonly-owned firearms and their popularity is clearly growing.
Dark Storm Industries produces their own MSR, the DS-15 Typhoon. The New York-based company ramped up production to meet skyrocketing demand. DSI co-owner Ed Newman explained it succinctly.
“People are scared with the coronavirus and then the potential long-term implications of that,” Newman said. “The defund the police movement, as well as the riots that we saw breaking out in certain cities, have caused people, even the most skeptical, to all of a sudden be concerned for the safety of their family.”
DSI is a small manufacturer that put up big numbers in 2020. The company normally produces 2,000-2,500 MSRs annually. In 2020, that number was closer to 10,000. Production and sales figures are similar across MSR manufacturers and correlate to one-out-of-five firearms in America sold being an MSR.
Megan Hill, 26 of Utah, did her research and explained why she pulled the trigger on buying an MSR. “We looked at the AR-15, and it was all in one package. You can target-shoot with it, protect yourself with it, hunt with it. Luckily we haven’t had to use it in self-defense, but it’s a comfort knowing that it’s there to protect my children and my family.”
Those sentiments are common among buyers.
Assault Weapons Ban 2.0
President Biden isn’t a stranger to a so-called “assault weapons” ban. As then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, President Biden ushered through the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. That ban expired in 2004 and didn’t work. NSSF data shows the ban had no effect on the reduction of crime.
Fast forward 25 years to when he campaigned for his present office, President Biden didn’t let facts get in the way of his bogeyman scare tactics. He campaigned with a gun control plank of banning MSRs and continued to knowingly misidentify them as so-called “assault rifles” and “weapons of war” despite the fact that MSRs operate on the same semiautomatic firing technology as common handguns and some shotguns.
The technology was introduced in the late 1800s and appeared on store shelves starting in 1903. The Colt Sporter, an early version of the AR-15, was sold commercially in the early 1960s.
President Biden would wipe out that history and cancel the culture of responsible firearm ownership if left to his own devices.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper questioned the president on the campaign trail in 2019, asking “To gun owners out there who say a Biden administration means they’re going to come for my guns…” “Bingo!” President Biden interrupted. “You’re right, if you have an assault weapon … The fact of the matter is they should be illegal. Period.”
President Biden even teased of installing former U.S. Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke as his gun-grabbing czar to lead the effort on a national MSR registry and confiscation scheme. That “mandatory buyback” plan would force MSR owners to face “consequences” if they didn’t comply and allow the U.S. government to use several billions of taxpayer dollars to seize lawfully-owned firearms.
With President Biden’s announcement this week of his gun control plan that includes an MSR ban, that would mean nearly 20 million MSR-owning Americans would become criminals. That doesn’t sound like “unifying the country,” especially when millions of those MSR owners are in communities where law enforcement budgets had been cut, leading to spikes in crime.
Real Solutions
Even with a threatened MSR ban on the horizon, voters still made their voices heard loud and clear and rejected more state and local-level gun control. Multi-million dollar efforts by gun control groups, led by antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, failed in almost every regard. Americans overwhelmingly voted with their wallets to exercise their Second Amendment rights, including purchasing MSRs.
Instead of faulty gun control schemes like banning the MSR, the firearm industry will continue promoting Real Solutions® to reduce unintended and criminal misuse of firearms. President Biden should listen to the American people on this issue too.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
I’d have to say that 20 million is wayyy on the low side!
One day maybe people will realize two things about stuff like this.
1) It’s not a “misfire” in any way, shape or form unless you actually believe that Biden gave a fuck about the “opinions of the voters”. He didn’t and doesn’t.
2) The solution to this is simple from a general population point of view. Ignore the law.
If you’re so inclined it’s not hard to find pot, meth, coke or even “rare” drugs like LSD basically anywhere in the USA. There’s a reason for this and once you figure it out you’ll realize that gun laws don’t matter here any more than they do in Mexico. What matters is the inclination of the populace to follow those laws and that inclination is based in a belief that the law is moral and also the correct solution for the perceived problem.
Sure, if you simply ignore the laws then Rule of Law ceases to matter. But it should be abundantly clear, even to those that require a dog and braille to get through life, that Rule of Law doesn’t matter any more and, quite frankly, hasn’t for quite awhile. The fact that people continue to believe that it does matter is astonishing to me at this point considering how much the fact that it doesn’t matter has been rubbed in everyone’s face for 11 months now.
Well said
“Gun laws don’t matter here any more than they do in Mexico.”
Except that in Mexico the gun laws, over time, have done a very good job of ensuring that the only people who have any — or if they do have any, the only ones who dare to use them — are the government, the cartels, and the very rich. That’s one way in which the laws matter very much.
Ah yes, the morally superior victim. Odd how many people like to play this role and then complain about it.
No huevos, no armas de fuego. Y sin armas nos no tenemos libertad.
This is something the cartels understand. The real question is why the rest don’t get it. Especially considering how well the Mormon controlled enclaves have done in blatantly ignoring the gun laws and fending off the cartels. Heck, the Policia Nacional have been bailed out by those religious nuts more than once.
Mormon controlled enclaves have done in blatantly ignoring the gun laws and fending off the cartels
Take that argument to the nine women and children “religious nuts” that were murdered (some burned alive) in a Cartel ambush…
Who are you calling a victim? And why would you acknowledge the mormons bailing out the police, then in the same sentence, call them religious nuts?
Almost sounds like you have multiple personalities.
*yawn* you guys get really butthurt about any turn-o-phrase involving religion, eh?
Oh, some Mormons took some casualties because of a cartel action? This is new?
The point is that the Mormons down there, who by the way are not SLC-style Mormons, hold territory and effectively defend it from the cartels. They smoke cartel technicals and even helicopters. With like belt-feds and other, even better, goodies. Very illegal, unlicensed and no one in their right mind is going to try to stop them. Partly no one is going to stop them because, short of the military, they’re the best armed group in the areas and they also provide a safe-haven for police who are forced to flee from the cartels.
Or hey, get some feelz about some irrelevant bullshit. You guys certainly wouldn’t be the first around here to entirely miss the point because you got offended about something ancillary.
Oh, yes, and who am I calling a victim? That would be the regular old generally disarmed citizens of Mexico who are at the mercy of street criminals, cartels, corrupt government agents and just about anyone else who cares to abuse them.
Lots of people in Juarez get murdered, most brutally too, not many can afford to take a trip down to the one gun store in Mexico and buy a gun to defend themselves.
The term is “consent of the governed” “A condition urged by many as a requirement for legitimate government: that the authority of a government should depend on the consent of the people, as expressed by votes in elections.”
I believe the last straw for many middle classed Americans was the fraudulent election where many laws were ignored and as a result that consent is being withdrawn.
“Consent of the governed” generally refers to the overarching legitimacy of government, not individual laws or regulations which may be made in error and not remove the overall legitimacy of the government or its structure.
One basically cannot withdraw “consent” from a singular law. One instead chooses to ignore that law while still generally consenting to the government or form of government.
The Left has done this for years in terms of federal immigration laws at the state and local levels without wholesale rejection of the federal system. No, they were smarter than that. They recognized the value in taking over the federal government and using it for their purposes, which they couldn’t do if they outright rejected its authority.
The right tends to go into the private sector while the left goes into the public sector. Now the left owns the federal bureaucracy. China is so bold that they acknowledged how important that is for them. And the media yawns…
“Ignore the law”
Like how brave Californians ignore weed laws?
That only works until a blurry and nebulous line is passed, *and then they decide to make an example out of you*.
Like Kyle, AKA “FPS Russia”. (Soon to be a Denver neighbor of yours…)
To paraphrase Franklin: You can choose to hang together or you can choose to be hanged separately. Your choice.
Conservatives generally prefer the latter because they fail to see what’s being done to them.
“Sure, if you simply ignore the laws then Rule of Law ceases to matter.”
Higher-ups within the DOJ regularly ignore laws and ignore their colleagues ignoring laws. Of course, I don’t have any sort of elite privilege like Comey, Hunter, and the gang.
Don’t get caught.
I once got into it with Hannibal here on these forums – who has now came out to be full libtard fudd and jackass – about his confusions of legality and morality.
The two are not the same. Laws don’t exist to keep us safe nor do they exist because they are just “right”. They exist to punish and enforce the governments will and control over people who willingly follow them. If you learned anything in 2020, it should have been that the police are not on your side. The government is not on your side. Playing by the rules, and playing fair, solves nothing in certain – most – political issues. Time to play for the win.
Yup. Rule of Law is based on a bunch of concepts that have been steadily undermined for quite some time. 2020 showed what was left of that system, at least in certain geographic areas.
But whatever, I’ve apparently been reliably diagnosed as having multiple personality disorder by a professional (see above). So, what do I know?
Right now my 3rd person (plural, prefers the pronoun “they”) figures it’s about time to see if Ralph is willing to share any of his glue.
Play by the enemies’ rules, lose by the enemies’ rules. Make your own ROE and roll over the enemy.
I’m sorry to say you you are completely wrong.
While illegal drugs are indeed freely available, the average citizen does not keep a pound of heroin in his safe.
When assault rifles are made illegal you’ll be unable to practice with them at the public shooting range.
You will be arrested.
You won’t be able to shoot them at informal outdoor ranges, because any game warden or policeman who comes by will arrest you.
You won’t be able to take them to the gun store to have a gunsmith repair them.
Even if you have private property way out in the woods, you are in danger if you have a car accident or a medical emergency and your car is inventoried.
Because you’ll be arrested.
The only thing you’ll be able to do with your assault rifle is keep it locked in your safe.
And if you ever have a medical emergency, a fire, or your wife gets mad at you and calls in a red flag complaint , you will be arrested.
20 or 30 years from now when you die now your wife and kids have a contraband object in their house that can send them to jail for 10 years.
So it’s likely that they will get rid of them after you die.
Even if your children agree with you and keep the guns in the safe, their kids are unlikely to keep contraband in the house in the future.
So in two generations the great majority of assault rifles will be nonfunctional or discarded
A right…. and an AK47….. not exercised, is a right…or gun…lost.
And, that is why they need to be used for 2A intended purpose……to keep the right to keep and bear and the AK. As did our Founding Fathers, we are going to have to put all that is sacred on the line for our Rights, Liberties, and Freedoms. For decades, we have given those that would take our Rights, Freedoms, and Liberties such a great jump on taking those away, it is going to make the First American Revolution seem like a church picnic.
The politicians don’t fear gun owners or gun owners who vote.
They have 20M illegal aliens that will swamp out the votes of gun owners.
They won’t stop their gun grabbing ways until the downside is made clear.
There is no way to know how all those illegal aliens will vote, or even if they will vote. Everyone seems to assume they will all go blue, but we’ve seen many times the error of assuming that any identity bloc will fall lock-step in to line– the most recent example being the Latin vote going heavily for Trump. There are some noticeable cracks in the black vote as well. You’re making the same mistake that the DemonRats do when they calculate their support.
Nobody assumes that they “will all vote blue”.
But we do have this fact.
Biden got 66% of Hispanic vote in 2020.
That’s what it was for Clinton in 2016.
That’s translates into millions of more votes in the Blue column.
Hispanics voting majority R is only a lie cooked up by the Koch brothers to provide cover for the GOPelite to vote with Dems for more illegals.
Go figure freeloaders that don’t love this countries values would vote for more hand-outs and anything that goes directly against the constitution. No big deal if it all fails in 20 years, they’ll just head for the next host or I mean refuge.
“There is no way to know how all those illegal aliens will vote”
They will probably be loyal democrat voters for a generation simply because the democrats made it possible for them to come to this “terrible, racist” country. The dems will lock in future generations by stepping up their propaganda in the education system, intentionally holding them back while blaming all problems on whitey (and the multi-billionaires that the dems actually work for), and hopefully locking them into welfare for life so they think they have to vote democrat just to survive.
That’s why they’re carting in Mexicans, not Cubans.
And when all this hype has little to NO effect on “gun violence”?????
Just alienating 100M+ gun owners…
banning guns is always the first step in a socialist/communist takeover. kamal was raised as a marxist by marxist parents. Joe has taken so many millions from China, that one has to admit he’s nothing but China’s puppet. 2021 is the centennial of the CCP. they’ve sunk billions into US political influence. China thinks it’s going to make joe turn America into a communist country. banning guns is the 1st step. The Democommies are following Saul Alinsky and Adolph Hitler’s playbooks. read up on it. It’ll give you a hint as to what we’re in for soon. An why MaligNancy Pelosi has built a prison fence around the Capitol Bldg to keep We The People at bay. We’re in for some bad times folks. Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR FIREARMS AND AMMO! And you’d better be stocking up heavily on both.
Kammie is a (BS) birthrite baby born to non US mother and father. NO legitimatcey as presidential successor.
It didn’t stop the mulatto from Kenya.
Bit hard to deny when Chinese officials were boasting about how Biden is “their” president and how they were funneling cash via his son and various “charitable foundations” they set up.
Don’t leave out Mitch McConnel as far as those bought and paid for by the Chinese Communists. His wife’s family are high ranking Chicomms.
The only thing that needs to be banned in America is The Biden/Harris Administration.
It’s a regime. Administration makes it seem like they didn’t cheat their way into the white palace. I like their accounting methods though. Wish my bank would count the same dollars multiple times and keep counting when nobodies looking. I’d be looking for a new addiction like the smartest man I know, Hunter Xiden.
Lol. Nice.
Kamala (not Kamal) excuse my typo error.
Democrats are the disease that’s destroying America. Come and take them!
Keep talking Joe.
See if you can sell more guns than Obama.
God Bless Rush Limbaugh.
Ah yes, that noble and nuanced purveyor of fine political discourse. Can’t say I’ll miss him, but I don’t like blowhards regardless of party affiliation.
Ahhh King Biden
2020 was our last chance to vote our way out of whats coming
Probably not too far off on that one.
We might (heavy emphasis on that word “might”) still be able to vote our way out of this mess in 2022 and/or 2024 IF (and that is a big “if”) the states fix their voting apparatus such that they accurately count the actual legal votes of legal voters.
Looking beyond 2024: if we have not voted enough “good” candidates into office by that time, then I agree that we will have lost our last chance to vote our way out of what is coming.
Caveats:
1) If Democrats somehow manage to declare statehood to Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico and give voting rights to all the illegal aliens, we will not be able to vote our way out of this mess.
2) If Democrats continue to control the United States Justice Department with an iron fist, we will not be able to vote our way out of this mess.
A politician with a law never stops a bad guy with a gun.
He only controls the good guys, which is his true agenda.
A bad guy with a gun can be stopped decisively by a good guy with a gun.
Sadly, politicians not as much…..yet.
The new agenda for humanity requires that no one will have the capacity to fight back. It has been said: “Our Task of creating a Socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.” No other explanation is possible.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that disarming good people in the name of making bad people harmless only eventually facilitates politicians shooting their own countrymen. History…learn from it or be doomed to relive it.
And there, boys and girls, is the Biden Gun Violence Prevention Plan in a nut shell. It’s all about protecting Socialist tyrannical politicians from American Patriots.
Our Founding Fathers would already have been finished shooting a second time.
They are ashamed of what we have allowed to happen to the Republic which they gave us.
America has been over run as promised by Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s. No longer a plan, now a completed checklist, Socialism is poised to pounce with the Left election win November 3….it is inevitable. America is lost without implementing the Second Amendment. And, that, boys and girls, is why the Left hates our gun rights with so much fervor.
Soap Box; Ballot Box;….and, now, Mail Box; Cartridge Box; Pine Box. We have lost what our Founding Fathers gave us via the first three. It will take a liberal….pun intended…..application of the last two to regain and preserve our Liberties, Rights, and Freedoms. All is on the line.
BROKEN ARROW!!!! BROKEN ARROW!!!! BROKEN ARROW!!! Expend all available ordnance on our coordinates!!!!
DOES HELP THE SELLS OF AR15 ? ?
Oh yeah…my 70 friend called me a few weeks and asked me “if”he should buy a certain AR…2 years ago he thought MY AR 15 was somehow “illegal”. Yeah he bought the rifle😏
70 YEARS OLD!
Give the kid-sniffer a break. He doesn’t even know where he is half the time let alone what the uh…. You know “the thing!” Says.
Pew, pew…
Whoops that hit a nerve. Musta been the x following a, c h
Moderated post.
try again see what happens.
Plahn is working, ha ha ha
Wow I’m beginning to think TTAG is really getting watched by the watchers big time.
Good thing I keep my Perpetual Neutrino Fusion Blomb on the hush hush, the eff🐝👁 is all over this place
Won’t happen. The country is awash with MSR’s already, and the 1994 ban cost Clinton control of Congress. There will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, but in the end, an MSR ban won’t get 67 Senate votes, and it’s not worth killing the filibuster for. Therefore, one must conclude that it’s all for show.
Unless of course, Republicans do something really stupid or spiteful (or both) and goad the Democrats into doing away with the filibuster. I would hope that Republicans would be smarter than that.
I would guess 20 million in ARs alone, followed closely by AKs, then the rest being SKS, FAL, G3, Garand type (M1 and M14 variants), and others.
“I would hope that Republicans would be smarter than that.” Don’t count on it.
Don’t count on them fighting for us, either. If they were of any use whatsoever, whether at the federal or state level, we’d have Trump and Pence again instead of the Thief in Chief and the communist whore.
ban won’t get 67 Senate votes
Only needs 60 votes.. Unless they can attach some kind spending to it then they can use the nuclear option and pass it with a simple majority… With Romney and Murkowski they won’t even need Kammaltoe…
Several of us are hoping the ‘progressives’ get their way and we get a $1400 check this month and a $2000 check next month — we’ll use them to buy AR-15s!
Hope so, I have an AR 14 picked out, it’s powerful enough to shoot down satellites, asteroids, even moonbats. A weapon of peace for sure.
All of these checks are a distraction. Every single stimulus package has been paying off the lobbyists. Suddenly blowing a trillion dollars is no big deal. Why aren’t we talking about the ramifications of unnecessary deficit spending while the debt has surpassed our GDP for the first time since WWII? That only lasted for three years in the 40’s. Now we just blew by it like it was nothing with no end in sight. This is actually an extreme security risk for this country, and no one cares because the elite are using this opportunity to pay themselves. Even the stimulus checks are helping the elites and China. Everyone rushes out to buy more junk from Amazon and Walmart. If you don’t need the money to pay your bills, then you shouldn’t be receiving a check.
Part of the plan to bankrupt American and let the Chicoms foreclose on America. Chicoms are Sleazy, Creepy, Senile Ole Joe and Kamaltoe’s real handlers.
Take your own $1400 and $2000 to buy those ARs. If you are a productive citizen with a job, getting those two checks for $3400 will end up costing you $17000 to maybe $34000. Government has no money. Those checks are borrowed money that you will have to pay back eventually. For every dollar in free shit you receive from government, someone has to send….get taxed…..maybe $5 to cover the skimming, scamming, squandering, and vote buying of politicians. $3400 times 5 for your own free shit, and an equal amount for one or two free shit addicted Government Plantation Dwellers that get like checks and never pay taxes. Government free shit is the most expensive gift you will ever buy for yourself. And, with that free shit dollar, comes control, restrictions, loss of freedom, liberty, and rights..
“the U.S. government to use several billions of taxpayer dollars to seize lawfully-owned firearms.” More likely a trillion with administrative costs.
Admin costs PC for body bags???? 🙂 🙂 🙂
More likely a trillion with administrative costs
AKA the CCPs cut….
Heh heh, theres certain letters you cant type or it goes to moderations. X and C and H and I together hits a nerve.
theres certain letters you cant type or it goes to moderations
Yeah I’ve been in moderator jail twice in the last 24 hrs, one got bail the other one went away, oh well XCHI were not involved but a couple of personal aspersions directed at a particular idiot and a liberal sprinkling of Fs and yous with some Cs and Ks seemed to get someone’s attention that one got the other guy deleted as well..
The games continue….
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