“You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed and you couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons,” said Biden.
QUICK FACTS:
- “The Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute,” Joe Biden said to reporters on Monday, which was Memorial Day, a national holiday honoring American soldiers who fought and died to protect the Constitution.
- Each person enlisting in the U.S. armed forces takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
- The former Vice President was talking about gun control as he returned to Washington, D.C., from Delaware, where he participated in Memorial Day ceremonies.
- “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed and you couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons,” said Biden, a statement fact-checked by Breitbart News as “false.”
- The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
- “The 22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lungs and we can get it out,” Biden went on to say, adding, “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” and, “The idea of a high caliber weapon, there is no rationale for it in terms of self-protection, hunting.”
- Biden went on to say that the argument from conservatives that citizens need high-caliber weapons in order to hold the government accountable with equal levels of force is flawed because Americans would have to own a modern fighter jet or a tank. “To do that you need an F-15, you need an Abrams tank,” he said, stating his belief that “it makes no sense to be able to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds.”
BIDEN PREDICTS REPUBLICANS WILL JOIN HIS CALLS FOR TOUGHER GUN CONTROL:
- Although Biden said he hadn’t spoken to Republicans on the issue, he did state that his “guess is … they’re going to have to take a hard look.”
- Biden also said he didn’t know where congressional negotiations stand, but that there is “realization on the part of rational Republicans” that “we can’t keep repeating ourselves,” referring to mass shootings.
- Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois recently said he is “open” to AR-15 restrictions. “Look, I have opposed a ban, you know, fairly recently. I think I’m open to a ban now,” Kinzinger told CNN, adding, “It’s going to depend on what it looks like because there’s a lot of nuances on what constitutes, you know, certain things.”
BACKGROUND:
- The Constitution and its amendments are meant to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” the Preamble to Constitution reads.
- Biden’s Memorial Day remarks come one day after he visited Uvalde, Texas to meet for three-plus hours with families of victims and survivors of the school mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, which has revitalized advocacy for stricter gun laws. Nineteen children and two teachers were shot and killed by Salvador Ramos (18).
