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Gun Control Evolution of Biden and the Dems by Don Smith

02/19/2021 10:26 AM | Anonymous

Gun Control Evolution of Biden and the Dems  by Don Smith, Wayne County chapter Chairman

Early in his career Joe Biden said gun regulation was ineffective.  Biden and many Senate Democrats supported the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act [FOPA] of 1986, which curtailed government abuse, recognized that many gun control laws were ineffective and wanted laws to be aimed at criminals rather than law-abiding citizens.  This bill was made necessary because the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms used a previous strict Gun Control Act to impede lawful gun ownership. 

The Senate Congressional Record, July 9,1985 lays out the reasons for FOPA (p.18158):

  • “The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act [FOPA] was conceived in the notion that law enforcement needed to be directed at the real criminal....” (emphasis added.)

  • “The sponsors and proponents of the Gun Control Act of 1968 claimed that it would significantly reduce the rate of crime, particularly crimes involving the use of firearms. It has not. Instead, between 1967 and 1982, the national homicide and handgun-homicide rates rose 50 percent, while robbery rates and robberies involving the use of firearms have nearly tripled.”(emphasis added.)

  •  “It is important that we who are in the Senate in 1985 pause to remember why the founders of our country viewed the right to own guns as fundamental. Of course, they knew the importance of firearms for hunting-not just for sport but for suppling food for the family. They also knew that, in a largely frontier society, guns were vital for self-defense against common criminals who were a constant threat to the safety and survival of law-abiding citizens.” (emphasis added.)

  •  “Today, these same arguments are presented in support of preserving the rights of gun ownership, and properly so as they are valid arguments. However, for the Founding Fathers, neither of these arguments was the overriding reason in favor of an armed citizenry. For them, the most important reason for gun ownership was political – that is, armed citizens constituted an effective hedge against tyrants." (emphasis added.)

Biden then flip-flopped in the late 1980s, with legislative efforts falsely claiming to address violent crime. He succeeded in 1994 with “the crime bill” passed by Congress. It banned large capacity magazines and “assault” weapons” (more properly called “Modern Sporting Rifles”).  It automatically expired in 2004 without a renewal vote.

Then-Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, said in a statement that the ban "provided only the illusion of reducing gun violence, but it did real damage to our liberties."

          Sunday, February 14, 2021, marked three years since a former student opened fire on the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 15 others. In a statement on February 14, 2021, President Biden:

  •     Hinted he would take executive action to attack guns
  •     Urged Congress to step up the pace of authoring anti-gun legislation
  •     And publicly called for a gun registry, as well as gun & magazine ban

    Biden issued the following statement on February 15, 2021:

          “This administration will not wait for the next mass shooting to heed that call. We will take action to end our epidemic of gun violence and make our schools and communities safer. Today, I am calling on Congress 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 street. We owe it to all those we’ve lost and to all those left behind to grieve to make a change. The time to act is now.”

          After the Parkland shooting, many students and family members called for stricter gun control laws. But not all of them. One of the exceptions was Andrew Pollack whose daughter Meadow was killed inside the school. He claimed the school’s liberal policies on student discipline had contributed to his daughter’s death.

     According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Pollack said:

  •  “After my daughter’s murder, the media didn’t seem interested in the facts. So, I found them myself. I learned that gun control laws didn’t fail my daughter. People did.”  Pollack blamed “far-left Democrats in our school district” for adopting insufficiently harsh disciplinary measures to catch previous red flags about the gunman, a troubled former student.

  • “I was just fine with the old approach to discipline and safety — it was called discipline and safety,” Pollack said, criticizing the school’s “restorative justice” policy. “But the Obama-Biden administration took Parkland’s bad policies and forced them into schools across America.” He praised President Trump for ending support for those policies and told listeners, “Their children’s safety depended on Trump being reelected.”     

“Pollack was angered by the media’s close focus on gun policy rather than on other factors leading up to the shooting.”

Pollack was also critical of the student activists who survived the massacre and then called for tighter gun control policies: “They just got famous off the death of these kids,” Pollack told The Times in 2019. “Their agenda was to get famous and spew more of their liberalism ways without looking at the facts.”

Reference Link: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-24/rnc-parkland-school-shooting-father-trump

Many of the “facts” referred to by Pollack can be found at the following reference link:https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article201636649.html

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