‘Whoppers’: Washington Post Factchecker Hits Biden With Four Pinocchios Over 2nd Amendment Claims

The far-left Washington Post delivered a blow to President Joe Biden by dismissing his recent claims about guns with a single word: “Whoppers.”

The newspaper owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hit Biden with a fact check and ruled his claim on the Second Amendment was worthy of four Pinocchios — the highest level it uses.

In one claim during a speech last week, Biden said: “And I might add: The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limiting the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

“Everything in that statement is wrong,” said David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the Independence Institute, according to the Post. When the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, “there were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own,” Kopel said.

Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler added that Biden detracted from his push to strengthen gun laws by getting facts wrong.

“Some readers might think this is a relatively inconsequential flub. But we disagree,” wrote Kessler. “Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objective,” Kessler added. “The president’s push for more gun restrictions is an important part of his political platform, so he undercuts his cause when he cites faux facts.”

Kessler also awarded Biden four “Pinocchios” for remarks Biden made about cannons and the Second Amendment and noted that Biden has not corrected the false statement.

“Moreover, Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false,” Kessler wrote. “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.”

Biden was ridiculed and criticized for other comments in the same speech where he warned the supporters of the Second Amendment that the government had F-15 fighter planes and nuclear weapons to tamp down any armed anti-government uprising.

The Washington Post addressed the cannon claim, specifically:

In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare war. But there is another element of that clause that might seem strange to modern ears — Congress also had the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.”

What’s that? These were special waivers that allowed private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it. The “letter of marque” allowed a warship to cross into another country’s territory to take a ship, while a “letter of reprisal” gave authorization to bring the ship back to the home port of the capturer. Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle.