Joe Biden’s Recent Gun Control Press Release Has Been Fact Checked: ‘Gun Violence In This Country Is An Epidemic’

By
David Rufful
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OPINION | This article contains the author's opinion.

Fact-Checkers are all over Joe Biden’s recent executive actions regarding gun control announcements, according to The Daily Wire.

Apparently, Biden shared a speech that was chock-full of misleading information.

Biden claimed that “These bills, one, require background checks for anyone purchasing a gun at a gun show, or an online sale.”

“Most people don’t know it, you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check.”

“But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want, and no background check.”

These claims are false. It is Federal law that all gun sales made by licensed sellers have to perform background checks on the individual purchasing the firearm.

Biden stated, “I know this has been a hobby horse of mine for a long time. Got it done once,”

“We should also ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country.”

“For that 10 years we had it done, the number of mass shootings actually went down.”

“We want to treat pistols, modified with stabilizing braces, with the seriousness they deserve.”

A stabilizing brace […] essentially makes that pistol a hell of a lot more accurate and a mini-rifle. As a result, it’s more lethal. Effectively, turning it into a short-barreled rifle.”

“That’s what the alleged shooter in Boulder appears to have done.”

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.”

“Let me say it again. Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.”

“You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech.”

More from The Daily Wire:

This is one of the most prevalent and misleading falsehoods promulgated by the Left when it comes to gun control. Federally licensed gun sellers are required, by law, to run background checks on all firearm purchases, whether at a gun show or in their gun store.

Unlicensed private individuals are permitted to sell guns without running a background check, but this is the case regardless of their location.

As Katie Pavlich wrote in March 2021 for Townhall in a piece titled “Fact Check the Left: Did a Clinton Era Gun Ban ‘Bring Down Mass Killings’ as Biden Claims?” this is simply false.

Not only is this period too small a sample size to reach any statistically significant conclusions, but the average number of mass shootings per year before and during the “Assault Weapons Ban” didn’t change, staying at 1.5 events per year.

The lethality of the firearm is the key part here, given that the stability of the gun after being fired (which is the purpose of the stabilizing brace) has no effective impact on the bullet fired or its deadliness.

While there is subjectivity in the term “epidemic,” Biden’s use of the word implies a massive increase in gun violence. In reality, rates of gun violence have not increased, with statistics showing that “as gun ownership has increased, the rate of firearm homicides has steadily declined since a brief spike in the early 1990s.”

This claim is routinely parroted by members of the Left while attempting to pick holes in the First Amendment. Unfortunately for them, it’s a false claim.

As described by Nashwa Gewaily, a media and First Amendment lawyer, the ‘crowded theater’ argument originated from an Oliver Wendell Holmes opinion in the 1919 Supreme Court case, Schenck vs. United States. “Schenck never amounted to any kind of binding standard or doctrine. It was basically a bit of emotionally charged extra flair from Justice Holmes, outside the official legal determination of that case; a powerful image that endured outside its context … It was not a high point in American jurisprudence.”