As if Joe Biden didn’t have enough trouble with recent polling data, he has once again opened himself up to snickers by declaring himself to be a gun owner in remarks he made at a fundraiser in California last week, according to a White House transcript.
“I’m a gun owner,” Biden said. “I own two shotguns. My son Beau passed away. He had another shot gun. We used to like to skeet shoot. We weren’t hunters.”
For Second Amendment activists and devoted shooters, this amounts to claiming one is a motorcycle rider because he owns an old Tote Goat. Owning one, or even two, firearms is how anti-gunners frequently get away with claiming to be gun owners while supporting restrictions and even bans on such things as so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines.”
According to the transcript, Biden told his audience, “And I — the way to sell this — I’d walk through the fishing areas. There’s a lot of lowland swamp area in the southern part of the Delmarva Peninsula.
And the guys would be fishing, and I was — when I was campaigning to get this done. And they’d say, ‘God darn, Joe, what the hell are you doing taking my gun away?’ And I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.’ I said, ‘How many — when you go deer hunting, how many deer are wearing Kevlar vests?’ And they’d look at me. I’m — I’m not joking. This is what I — and they’d kind of look at me and g — and I said, ‘And, by the way, if you need 30, 40, 60, up to 100 rounds to fire,’ I said, ‘you’re a danger to yourself, man.’ And they’d go, ‘Yeah, well, Joe, but they say you’re going to take my gun.’”
Biden’s rambling remarks about gun control went on for several minutes, and the point he appears to have been trying to make is that he still wants to ban modern semi-auto rifles and their standard capacity magazines.
Gun owners should remain vigilant because of a recent survey about gun control.
Public support for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” has dropped to its lowest level since February 2013, though gun-banners still hold a 5 percent lead (50%) over ban opponents (45%) in the latest Quinnipiac poll.
The poll also revealed that far more people (40%) think mental health issues are the main cause of mass shootings by young people, more than 2-to-1 over the “availability of guns” (19%). Family instability comes in as a close third (17%), the poll found. Getting far less blame are social media (10%) and entertainment, including films and video games (7%).
The bad news is that, according to Quinnipiac, “Americans support 57 – 38 percent stricter gun laws in the United States. That is an increase in support for stricter gun laws from a Quinnipiac University poll in November 2021 when 45 percent supported stricter gun laws in the United States and 49 percent opposed.”
There is a definite split along party lines, but still the majority of Democrats (91 – 8 percent) and Independents (56 – 38 percent) support stricter gun laws in the United States, the university revealed.
Republicans, on the other hand, oppose stricter gun control by a 64-32 margin.
“There is near unanimous support (92 percent) for requiring background checks for all gun buyers,” Quinnipiac reported, “while 7 percent oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers.”
