President Joe Biden reportedly won’t rule out using executive orders to crackdown on Americans’ constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights.
The revelation was made during a White House press conference on Tuesday in response to a statement that Biden put out last week calling for banning semi-automatic firearms in addition to other gun control measures.
“What is your timetable for action on what the president calls common sense measures?” a reporter asked Psaki. “And what’s the realistic hope that you have this will pass both houses?”
“Well, we haven’t proposed a package at this point,” Psaki responded. “So it’s hard for me to make a prediction about its likelihood of passing. But I will say that the president is somebody throughout his career who has advocated for smart gun safety measures. He has not afraid of standing up to the NRA. He’s done it multiple times and won on background checks and a range of issues. And it is a priority to him on a personal level, but I don’t have a prediction for you, or preview for you on a timeline of a package, and certainly not what it will look like and how it goes through Congress.”
WATCH:
"He's not afraid of standing up to the NRA, he's done it multiple times and won."@PressSec tells reporters that gun control is a personal priority for @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/voNwPwHhFy
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 16, 2021
Later in the press conference, a second reporter asked Psaki, “Does the president still plan to take executive action on gun” control?
“The president has a range of actions at his disposal,” Psaki responded. “He hasn’t ruled out either of those options.”
The question came after Biden called on Congress late last week to “enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.”
The Daily Wire reported:
In the statement, Biden’s call for “banning assault weapons” likely amounts to calling for a ban on semi-automatic firearms, and there was no language included in the statement about allowing gun owners who currently own those weapons to be able to keep those weapons. If gun owners are not allowed to keep those specific semi-automatic firearms under a Biden ban, that would effectively amount to a mandatory gun confiscation-type program.
Biden’s call on Congress to enact legislation that would strip gun manufacturers of immunity from lawsuits who “knowingly put weapons of war on our streets” is essentially a backdoor way of trying to bankrupt the gun industry or force them to drastically change the types of weapons they are willing to sell.
When gun control activists use the term “weapons of war,” they are generally using it in such a way as to portray the weapons that they want to ban as “weapons” that are used in “war,” as in used by militaries. However, this is inaccurate because the types of weapons that gun control activists are referring to, usually AR-15-style rifles, are not used in war. The variants of those rifles that are currently sold by gun manufacturers in the U.S. are semi-automatic firearms, not the fully automatic versions that are used by military.