He Said The Quiet Part Out Loud

During a July 21 town hall event on CNN, President Joe Biden was addressed by a member of the audience who posed a set-up question about guns. The questioner asked, “So, how will you address gun violence, from a federal point of view, to actually bring about change and make our local cities safer?” The front part of the president’s answer was nonsensical, but then he said the quiet part out loud: “Guns. I’m the only guy that ever got passed legislation, when I was a senator, that made sure we eliminated assault weapons. The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon — whether it’s a — whether it’s a 9-millimeter pistol or whether it’s a rifle — is ridiculous. I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things, but I’m not likely to get that done in the near term.”

That language seems pretty clear to me — President “No One Is Coming to Take Your Guns” wants to take at least some guns, such as AR-15s, which can accept standard-capacity magazines of 30 rounds, for example. That plank of the Biden citizen-disarmament plan was made very clear in his “The Biden Plan To End Our Gun Violence Epidemic,” which I excerpted at length in the October 2020 Downrange column. But based on his remarks of July 21, he also broadened his wish list of firearms he’d like to ban/take/regulate to include 9mm pistols, based on their ability to accept higher-round count magazines. Do I think he actually wants to ban only 9mm pistols that accept 20 or more rounds in the magazine? No, of course not.

Hopefully, he’s right about the last thing he said: “… but I’m not likely to get that done in the near term.”

On September 1, 2021, about the date you’ll receive this issue, my home state of Texas will join 20 other states in allowing Constitutional Carry (CC), or permitless carry, for carrying a handgun. Sorry we’re so late. The following states allow permitless concealed carry and open carry: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

It could have been 22 states had Louisiana’s Democrat governor Gov. John Bel Edwards not vetoed a Constitutional Carry bill in that state. In a veto-override session that failed, GOP State Senators Patrick Connick, Louie Bernard, and Franklin Foil supported the legislation during the regular session, but voted against it when the chips were down and they had a chance to override Bel’s veto.

Hopefully, Louisiana voters will remember this when these legislators appear on a ballot in the future.

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This article was published in GunTests on August 23, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from the author.