Biden Wants Your Guns

Citing a “gun violence public health epidemic,” President Biden has promised both executive and legislative action against firearms rights. Epidemic? Homicides, including gun homicides, trended steadily downward from the early 1990s through 2019. The surge in crime and homicides starting in 2020 coincided with the riots, urban disorder, and defund-the-police activism that roiled America last summer.

But guns—not the actions of leftist politicians, activists, and media operatives—are the real problem, according to Biden. He demanded that Congress, among other things, ban so-called assault weapons, establish a universal background check system for all gun transfers, and pass legislation that would certainly bankrupt the domestic firearms industry. But he also announced forthcoming executive actions, two of which are especially revealing.

The first is Biden’s promise to publish a rule within 60 days to establish that a “stabilizing arm brace” can turn a lawfully owned pistol into a “short-barreled rifle.” Owners of short-barreled rifles must register them with the federal government under threat of heavy fines and imprisonment. Biden claims that an arm brace, like the one on the pistol used by Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa in Boulder last month to murder 10 people, “can make a firearm more stable and accurate while still being concealable.”