Joe Biden is taking heat for his foul remark to a Michigan factory worker in an exchange about gun control. (YouTube, CBS News)
Democrat Joe Biden’s expletive-laced argument with a Detroit auto plant worker is getting lots of attention, and it raises a question whether the former vice president was trying to “bully” his way out of an uncomfortable confrontation with someone who had him by the…facts.
Hardhat Jerry Wayne, who appeared Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends” to tell his side of the story, came across as articulate, perhaps a bit intense, but with the nerve to call out a career gun control proponent.
While Biden’s initial profane in-your-face remark that Wayne was “Full of s—” became the stuff of overnight legend, the would-be president said a couple of other things that were less audible but bear attention.
He insisted to Wayne that he supports the Second Amendment, and that he owns a couple of shotguns, in 20- and 12-gauge. But then he says something that has raised a few eyebrows.
“Guess what, you’re not allowed to own any weapons,” Biden stated, followed quickly by, “I’m not taking your gun away, at all.”
But that’s not what he intimated to Anderson Cooper, then working at CNN, in an August 2019 interview, “Look, the Second Amendment doesn’t say you can’t restrict the kinds of weapons people can own.” The amendment doesn’t give the government any authority to create restrictions, either. It says what it says:
“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.”
At one point, Biden can be heard telling Wayne not to be a “horse’s ass.” It appears Biden was deliberately getting into the other man’s face in an effort to shut him up, if not shut him down.
In the video, Biden became almost immediately defensive, and perhaps even combative. But his protestations about being accused of wanting to ban guns appears solely designed to allay fears of his actual gun control agenda. His past remarks have come back to haunt him.
Biden, along with all the other Democrat candidates at the Houston debated did nothing to correct Beto O’Rourke’s declaration, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” At the time, Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms criticized their silence and said it indicated they all actually concurred with the former Texas congressman.
And when he told Cooper during the televised interview, “Bingo! You’re right if you have an assault weapon” in reaction to the commentator’s point about gun owners being worried Biden would come after their guns.
All of those instances only reinforce the impression that Biden is a devoted gun prohibitionist, and he does nothing to correct that except to claim otherwise, and then engage in arguments with people who challenge him.
Biden is basking in the spotlight of winning several state primaries over the past couple of Tuesdays. His campaign prior to South Carolina’s vote was virtually broke, but now he’s the front-runner. Whether that will translate to winning the nomination, and perhaps the election, remains to be seen.
But the more he talks about guns, the less gun owners are inclined to believe him. Saying he supports the Second Amendment and then noting he “passed” the 1994 ban on so-called “assault weapons” s though he did it all by himself suggests to gun owners that if there is anyone in a conversation that is “full of s—” it may be Biden, not the other person.
