Charles Chuck Schumer New York Senator
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The first item on Joe Biden’s list of anti-gun proposals is the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. If he’s elected and Democrats re-take control of the Senate, that could price guns out of the reach of many Americans and threaten the existence of many gun manufacturers.

Gun-control advocates sometimes claim that gun makers cater to the criminal market with low prices and easy concealability. This doesn’t pass muster. Lightweight, compact firearms make life easier for the 19.48 million Americans who carry concealed handguns, and women generally prefer smaller, lightweight guns.

My research finds increases in gun ownership are associated with drops in crime, not rises. Poor people in the areas with the highest crime rates benefit the most from owning guns, according to my studies. But gun-maker liability would be sure to make guns unaffordable for them. Police also believe gun ownership helps to combat crime: When PoliceOne surveyed its members in 2013, around 76% answered that legally armed citizens are very or extremely important in reducing crime.

If high-profile Democrats really believe that guns produce no benefits, they ought to ask their bodyguards to disarm. Instead, these politicians disarm vulnerable people.

Mr. Trump is right: Democrats want to ban guns. And if they win the Senate and abolish its filibuster, as they keep threatening, they could do it.

– John Lott in Democrats are Coming for Your Guns

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

78 COMMENTS

  1. Bummer. Paywall at the WSJ.

    I think John is right, and that this is probably one of THE most important elections of our time.

    • “Bummer. Paywall…”

      Here ya go –

      “When President Trump introduced Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, he warned: “The coming years will decide the survival of our Second Amendment.” He’s right.

      Joe Biden’s campaign website contains a long list of gun-control proposals: national gun licensing; red-flag laws, which let judges seize guns without a hearing or mental-health evaluation; and bans on semiautomatic guns that look like military weapons.

      First on Mr. Biden’s list, however, is a proposal to make gun manufacturers civilly liable for misuse of guns they sell. This means people could sue manufacturers and sellers whenever a crime, accident or suicide occurs with a gun. The straightforward result would be to put gun makers out of business.

      Imagine what would happen to the car industry if similar rules applied. The National Safety Council estimates that 39,404 Americans died and 4.5 million were injured from car accidents in 2018. Cars are also used frequently to commit crimes.

      Note that cases of product malfunction are already covered; to run afoul of Mr. Biden’s proposed rule, product makers need not do anything wrong at all. Car accidents often occur when a driver isn’t paying attention or drives recklessly, perhaps under the influence. It would be ludicrous to make car makers pay lost wages, medical costs and pain and suffering because of a driver’s negligence.

      Guns aren’t so different. Less than 1% of guns are ever used in crimes, suicides or accidents, and when they are, it’s virtually always the result of the user’s actions. Many other products, such as motorcycles, have much higher probabilities of causing harm. The death rate per motorcycle is 0.05%; the date rate for guns is 0.008%. The latter includes murder, accidental deaths and suicides. Guns are also used defensively about two million times in the average year. Will government reward gun makers when their products are used to save lives?

      Gun-control advocates sometimes claim that gun makers cater to the criminal market with low prices and easy concealability. This doesn’t pass muster. Lightweight, compact firearms make life easier for the 19.48 million Americans who carry concealed handguns, and women generally prefer smaller, lightweight guns.

      My research finds increases in gun ownership are associated with drops in crime, not rises. Poor people in the areas with the highest crime rates benefit the most from owning guns, according to my studies. But gun-maker liability would be sure to make guns unaffordable for them. Police also believe gun ownership helps to combat crime: When PoliceOne surveyed its members in 2013, around 76% answered that legally armed citizens are very or extremely important in reducing crime.

      If high-profile Democrats really believe that guns produce no benefits, they ought to ask their bodyguards to disarm. Instead, these politicians disarm vulnerable people.

      Mr. Trump is right: Democrats want to ban guns. And if they win the Senate and abolish its filibuster, as they keep threatening, they could do it.”

        • Sweet Cheeks Newsom has already announced his plans to do away with automobiles in CA. Guns, cars, and anything that contributes to a free life will be done away with.

        • Dems won’t be happy until transportation and energy costs are sky high. This won’t affect the dependent class or the upper and big city bureaucrat class. A few clean energy investors are poised to make a fortune. It will destroy the middle class, just like most of their absurd policies. I already pay a fortune to the electric company during the cold months. I don’t need it to get any worse. I’m not ready for $5/gallon gas either. Some people depend on their personal vehicle to make a living.

          Let’s talk about those mythical clean energy jobs. I was involved with a solar farm project recently. I witnessed the crew that came in to install the perimeter fence and the solar panel posts. Not a single one of them were speaking English. Remember, this is Joe’s brilliant economic plan to make us all rich.

        • Newsom has no intention to get rid of automobiles as such — just the ones that are most useful to people like you and me. The average American is far too mobile and independent for the progressive taste.

      • Confiscating guns is just the tip of the progressive-fascist iceberg. In order to implement their fuller agenda, they’re going to have to convert America into a police state.

      • If they can’t ban cars could they at least limit the width of tires, critters could dodge a model T’s tires much easier. Ban assault tires.

    • Tom,
      You did not see this here. If you google this phrase Bypass Paywalls by Adam
      And know a wee bit about how to install code off of Github you just might not have to go “bummer another paywall.”

  2. Yea we will ignore their laws pertaining to gun controls in Texas. All manufacturers should move here or to another free state that will protect their rights.
    They don’t want us armed. They want to defund the police have open borders and let rioters and criminals run the cities, no thanks.

    • Make Texas and other free states into sanctuary states for guns?
      Now sanctuary cities and sanctuary states don’t sound so bad, do they!

      • Many counties in various states have declared themselves 2A sanctuaries. Almost immediately the democrats start complaining about them violating the law and how locals can’t override the feds. The hypocrisy is deep with democrats.

  3. Sorry self serving pompous democRats but just because you racists got away with denying freed slaves their right to own firearms and later concocting Jim Crow Laws to deny Black Americans their 2A Rights does not mean you sickos can pull that kind of sht again.

    TRUMP/PENCE 2020.

    • Debbie,
      You need to learn to say what you mean.
      When you beat around the bush like this, it’s hard to decipher…

      😎

  4. The Commiecrat party has proven that they are liars and lack any morals, what with their sponsorship of racism and outright murder of infants, they as a party offer no redeeming qualities.

  5. Strange times we live in without doubt.

    Once the people are disarmed any ‘freedom’ to say No is gone. As Chairman Mao said “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Force, for good or bad, is the final decider when push comes to shove. Force has no side it takes during any struggle. The victor writes the history.

    Enough cliches….Firearms confiscation through any scheme is a non-starter. Someone should tell Biden that, if he can even comprehend at this point.

    There are certain parallels I see to China’s Cultural Revolution when I look at the Portland, Seattle, Washington, ect riots and the people involved.

    • On China the PLA is NOT the country’s army. It certainly does not serve the country’s constitution. The PLA is the Chinese Communist Party’s army and is answerable only to THE PARTY.

      • I was thinking of the young ‘Red Guards’ as useful foot soldiers until they weren’t.

        Looking at the rioters who want to overthrow ‘the system’.

        Was just a thought..

  6. 213,462 Dead as of this morning:
    https://www.bing.com/covid/local/unitedstates

    There’s your real problem. Trump’s failed leadership and mental derangement that has ignored all science and medical experts, ending in a super-spreader event at Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination announcement in the Rose Garden. Trump’s subsequent behavior has emphasized his incompetence and further weakened hm in the polls. There is no way that Biden should now be increasing his lead in those states Trump won over Shrillery, but he is. That’s Trump’s doing, not Biden’s.

    Now the kicker, several Republican Senators we are counting on to confirm Barrett before the election are positive with COVD-19 on account of being close to Trump. If they are unable to vote remotely, Barrett could lose. That’s still not the most likely outcome but the numbers are increasingly worrisome.

    Trump must be removed to protect our national security and repair our standing in the world, and at home. But Barett is needed to be the backstop against anti-Second Amendment Hoplophobic lunacy.

    This is the worst year for Presidential politics and American leadership many generations.

    Frankly, it is a scary time.

    • @en Please stop, it’s 6% of 213,462 Dead. Even the CDC admits only 6% of the reported deaths were actually a result of CV19. There is a difference in dying from COVID and dying with COVID antibodies in your system ( which is how that are inflating the numbers) 94% of the deaths were people who would have died anyway from heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, flu, Alzheimers, hepatitis, car accidents…. Please, its a highly contagious cold virus, not the black plague, which was a death sentence for 95% of those infected, here with COVID-19 the survival rate is 99.95%.

      • I just heard a report that estimated there are likely 20x more people infected. Obviously this would change the death rate.

        • This really pales in comparison to Biden’s 150 million gun deaths. Guns have turned this country into Avengers End Game, half the country’s been wiped out.

        • WHO figures that 10% of the world’s population have been infected, that equates to over 700 million, which is WAY beyond any numbers reported so far. And would make us expect 33 million infections in America.

      • @ MB (the real MB), Please stop. You are putting out completely false information. Blatant lies and distortions. Fake news and utterly untrue narratives.

        Please just stop. The claim that COVID-19 is something drastically less than it is only leads to more illness, suffering and death.

        Please just Stop being complicit in this madness.

        • @en . I suggest you read the data from the CDC. You are the one spreading the nonsense the sky is falling. BTW, the national death rate is actually right inline with 2017, 2018,& 2019. Nothing has changed.

        • “BTW, the national death rate is actually right inline with 2017, 2018,& 2019. Nothing has changed.”

          It will probably take another year or two to get a full accounting of what happened this year. We’ll be able to look at the historical rates for various illnesses and compare it to this year. I’m not saying Covid isn’t a killer, but I think the results will be interesting to see. I just hope we don’t see more monkeying with data to arrive at the desired outcome like we saw with the federal government when Obama was pushing the Paris Climate Accord.

        • OK, Toots, we can all get on tah Intarwebs, too. Guess what? Used to be, if you wanted to refute someone’s argument that cited FACTS, you had to rebut those facts.

          (*looking though enuf’s irrational rant of a post for facts – finds none*)

          Sit down and shut up, you’re drunk (and stupid – and “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life!”)

        • Madness is what results from letting fear control your life. Trump is absolutely correct when he tells people not to fear COVID. This is a sign of true leadership.

    • enuf,
      Let’s not forget that the scientists told us that we didn’t have to worry about social distancing as long as we supported the Marxist BLM movement. Should we listen to those scientists? They also told us NOT to wear masks at first. They literally said it would do more harm than good. This idea that you only get sick if you don’t believe the current talk from scientists (which changes over time) is disingenuous at best.

    • …to protect our national security and repair our standing in the world, and at home…

      I think we have very different definitions of all the terms you mentioned here. Especially the “our” part.

      • Is it me or are enuf and miner49er starting to sound desperate?

        They seem to be getting frantic as they realize that Trump is heading for his second term.

        • I kinda thought they ALWAYS sounded desperate, but maybe that’s just me. I will say, they have ramped up their ranting irrationality of late. My dear, departed Daddy used to have a saying to describe someone like enuf or Miner49er – “Poor boy looks like a cat trying to cover s*** on a linoleum floor!” That’s kinda the vibe I get off enuf and 49er, these days.

    • The vote can take place anytime prior to January 3, 2021, assuming the Senate is in session. There need only be a majority to constitute a quorum.

      • Assuming you’re correct, thanks for that, I had been wondering. So all the Dems could stay home, so long as all the GOP showed up. The other possibility I was considering was the question decided by a majority of those present on the date specified by McConnell.

    • Those death tolls may or may not be accurate but it has nothing to do with anything Trump failed to do. His efforts at gaining control over the borders got him being called a racist.

    • “Standing in the world” — ??
      Just in the past few weeks, N. Korea has announced a willingness to disarm nuclear weapons, and we have a historically significant peace accord in the Middle East. What of significance did any prior President, Republican or Democrat, do to compare, dating back to Reagan?

    • Trump having C19 is propaganda. “Look at me, I got it and two days later I’m cured, thanx to my trioxaminedilithimideoxychlorine.”

  7. If a mugger says, “Give me your wallet, and your watch!”
    and you reply, “I don’t want to,”
    and the mugger says, “Okay, just give me your wallet,”
    that’s not a compromise; it’s still a mugging.

    I predict that if Joe Biden wins, he will announce the same sort of fake “compromise” on gun confiscation.
    Unfortunately, Biden’s idea of “compromise” is like this:
    “I want all your guns. You want to keep all your guns. We’ll ‘compromise’ and I’ll just take all your semiautomatic guns,” leaving you with only revolvers, bolt actions, lever actions, and (if you’re lucky) pump actions.

      • Wait why are they shooting eachother if N.F.A.C. means Negroes Fighting Against Caucasians??

        • I thought it was Negligently Firing At Comrades.

          I love how the guy this weekend ‘wasn’t part of the rally’. Yeah, he wasn’t part of the rally only because you arrested him before the rally officially started. There was one and only one reason why that particular felon was in that particular town open carrying a loaded rifle: The NAFC rally.

    • “NFAC just shot themselves again lol”

      When will this begin to affect their attendance? People don’t want to get shot. It looks like the “shooter” was prohibited from having a firearm. Imagine the press this would get at the armed rally in Virginia or Michigan.

      • The NFAC is a group of idiots with guns. That’s all they are. But that group will never be held to account for the people they shoot wether by accident or anything else.

    • I think this brings a score of White Supremacists:0 to NFAC: -4. The white supremacists don’t seem to be showing up to these protests, and they’re still ahead. Maybe NFAC needs to choose another organization as an adversary so that a cause they support will be the winner.

  9. Better to forsake our rights, let government control our speech, sell our autonomy to China and vote for a senile segregationist child-groper than to live one more moment under this fascist Trump regime. Did you know that literal Hitler writes mean Tweets?

    Biden/Harris 2020. Bus Back Blacks. And the ones he can’t bus back Harris will lock-up.

  10. But…they’ve told me for years they’re not trying to take my guns.
    Then there’s that pesky constitution issue, just look to Beto, he’s got solutions for that too. Damn old papers getting in the way of “progress.”

  11. If you want to protect the 2nd Amendment you have to vote for Trump and every single Republican in the Senate, even the spineless, backstabbing, coward republicans…….only republican control of the Senate will allow Trump to replace Breyer, which would give us ar real majority on the court….and to replace Thomas if he wants to retire….if biden gets in, he could replace both breyer and thomas putting the court back in the left camp……so go out and vote at an actual polling location so the democrats don’t throw out your ballot……

    • Yes, there is risk. But putting Trump in for another term of chaos and ineptitude would be a tragic mistake for American National Security. We have never had a more incompetent, disaster prone person in the Oval Office.

      Odds now lean toward Biden winning the election. I’m not making any prediction, only looking at the polling. There remains the possibility of an Electoral Vote win over the popular vote.

      Of the Second Amendment all we can now do is hoped that a sufficient number of Republican Senators remain healthy enough to be active in the confirmation of Barrett. If too many of them are unable due to the President and his circle spreading COVID-19, there is the now very real potential of Barrett’s nomination failing. This was very unlikely before Trump’s leadership failures led to widespread infection among his staff, campaign officials and visiting politicians. Now, because of Trump’s insane behavior, the certainty of our desired outcome has fallen considerably.

      • enuf,

        Help me to understand your frequent assertions that Trump is a disaster: please cite three examples of Trump’s incredible ineptitude and how Biden as President would have done better.

        • enuf’s current argument seems to lean on Covid pretty heavily, but he was saying the exact same thing about Trump before anyone knew what Covid-19 was. He also seems to hate Trump’s foreign policy. It’s objectively better than at least Obama and Bush, so it would be interesting to hear some details on his analysis. I have a feeling that it has to do with scary words and feelz.

        • I’ve asked the same thing several times. You won’t get any concrete examples, because there aren’t any.

          What I’ve been trying to point out is that Joe Biden, with almost 50 years in DC, has played a big role in putting this country into the appalling situation it’s in — and if you hate Trump, that INCLUDES Trump. Whether you love Trump or hate him, it should be perfectly clear that he could never have been elected in a healthy political environment.

          If you’d normally vote Republican but can’t make yourself vote for Trump, then just don’t vote. Not casting a vote is a principled choice.

          Voting for more of what put you in this impossible position, let alone a candidate who has PROMISED to remove your Second Amendment rights, is insane.

      • I have more sympathy for your fears about Trump than most here, but am not convinced that his ineptitude, hubris, and greed are more of a threat than allowing a vehicle for the Marxists to get hold of more of the strings of government. I don’t think Biden is more Marxist than he needs to be to get into power with the Democrats, but the people that are riding along with him sure look like they are. Trump will almost certainly be gone in four years and without an apparatus that lasts beyond him. But, as history has demonstrated, once the Marxists get a critical mass in government they are in until violent revolution or collapse. Turning fighting rifle and handgun owners into felons is a significant step toward totalitarian government and Biden is without a doubt promising to do that. It would give them much leverage over millions of people that are likely to oppose their efforts. It would empower their street level forces significant if it was effectively a felony to even be ready to fight them when they go on rampages. I doubt the supreme court is much of an obstacle to the combined efforts of the executive and legislative branches anymore.

      • Trump has no leadership failures. He is they only one in Washington that can lead. I don’t agree with certain specific decisions but that does not mean leadership failures.

  12. “Your Latest Reminder: Democrats Really Do Want to Take Your Guns and Now They’re Happy to Tell You That”

    They “happy” to tell you that only because they think they can take back the WH and senate…it’s up to US to make sure that doesn’t happen…

  14. While I don’t doubt that Democrats dream of making life miserable/impossible for firearm manufacturers, they don’t need to win this election to do it.

    If Democrats and their supporters really want to eliminate firearm manufacturers, all they have to do is BUY them and then shutter them. All of the firearm manufacturers combined could not cost much more than $5 billion — which almost qualifies as a rounding error on the combined balance sheets of a small cabal of anti-gun billionaires.

    That small cabal of anti-gun billionaires are Bezos, Zuckerburg, Gates, Buffet, Bloomberg, and Soros whose combined wealth is something like half a TRILLION dollars. After all, what can you do with $500 billion that you cannot do with $495 billion?

  16. History has shown each time a country or group of people vote themselves into Socialism. Their Society is destroyed and they discover the only way out is through death or violent overthrow. Unfortunately the human species rarely learns from examples of the past. Believing that “This Time WE” can make it work. This leaves a paradox for those who understand the Evil’s of Socialism. Do they continue to resist as their society slowly devolves into it’s destruction or do they destroy all vestiges of it’s influence. Knowing this will require the violent destruction of much of their Society. This has been a question of the ages requiring answers that few wish to comprehend and yet must be addressed. For even “Those who choose not to decide, still have made a choice”.(Rush 2112) A Citizenry that Fears the Consequences of Fighting for Their Freedoms…More than They Fear the Loss of Those Freedoms…Have Become Subjects and Allowed Tyranny to Prevail. Choose Wisely and Keep Your Powder Dry.

    • Rush’s Freewill was actually on the Permanent Waves album, but no matter- the point is the same. Side One of Rush 2112 is devoted to the struggle of freedom against political, social, physical and thought oppression. And it ROCKS!

  17. Clean measured hydration, being necessary for the survival of living tissue, the ability of the people to have and drink water shall not be infringed.

    You wouldn’t think this could be easily misinterpreted… would you?

    • The Constitution:
      A well-regulated body of teachers being necessary to an educated populace, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.

      Democrats:
      Only credentialed teachers should be allowed to read.

      • And only certain books. Not all books. Certainly not scary books, or lots of books, or books with lots of content. You can check them out from the (state run) library, but only 1 at a time, and once a month.

  18. If I’d have stolen my gunms I really couldn’t complain when “they” take them. However since I paid for them, and the country of America gave me permission to purchase them and then “they” take them, that makes “them” thieves or me an idiot for buying gunms.,,,,,, Word on the streets yah all, Antifa is tooling up.

  19. I would love to see all of the anti-gunners in Congress, Democratic Leadership, and all the supporters of restrictive gun control which does not target criminals, mentally impaired, abusers, etc. stripped of their Congressional Protections and private security. They then will be forced to relocate to a downtown area with limited local support, no access to bank accounts, or support from outside sources, government, family or others and forced to live like the poor of this country for 6 months. Then we will have another election in order to determine if the get their jobs back or are even accepted into society.

  20. 5 million new gun owners plus the other 25 million that were bought by gun owners are not going to give them up! Hahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha, one bullet at a time!

Comments are closed.