What I wish to talk with you about this month will come as no big surprise to most of you. After all, I’m one of the gun guys that contribute to The Northwoods Sporting Journal, and over the years I’ve written quite a bit about gun rights for several outlets. I’ve even appeared on NRA TV with the host of Cam & Co., Cam Edwards to discuss hunting and gun rights. Please do not mistake this as hubris, my point here is that I’ve been involved in the gun rights community for some time and have seen, and written about, the many challenges and abuses of our collective gun rights as United States citizens. What I see looming ahead does not bode well for us. As we all know, elections have consequences. This time though, the consequences for law-abiding gun owners and hunters may prove to be dire indeed.
In the past, as anti-gun politicians were elected to high office, we could usually expect some saber rattling from them on gun rights issues. Their political base demanded it. It was expected. On the other side, we had grass root activists and pro-gun elected officials lobbying on our behalf to stem the flow of anti-gun legislation. There was always a power struggle, a tug-of-war on gun legislation, BATFE rule-making and domestic policy in regards to firearm ownership. This time it is different. The anti-gun activists have learned from their losses in the past. They have learned that a majority of Americans support lawful gun ownership and didn’t buy the tactics employed in the past to try and push through egregious and unconstitutional gun legislation. The anti-gunners have learned to change the way they speak, to cloak their true intentions with misleading titles of bills. Terms bandied about now include ‘extreme risk’, ‘weapons of war’ and ‘common-sense gun laws’ – all of meant to elicit emotion and support for the unlawful usurpation of the Second Amendment.
They have also learned to run the end-around. Having lost support for a heads on-challenge to lawful ownership of firearms, the new strategy is comprised of feints and flanking maneuvers. Now, the anti-gun activists and elected officials mask their true intent by voicing claims of protecting the public safety, combating an ‘epidemic of gun violence’, and trying to make a constitutional issue a public health issue.
Now, I’m not asking you to take my word for it, I merely wanted to lay it out for you in general terms before we get down to brass tacks. President Joe Biden’s ‘Gun Safety’ platform is one of the most sweeping, anti-gun plans to be publicly shared by a politician in recent times. The vast majority of his positions are adopted from radical anti-gun groups such as March for Our Lives, The Giffords Law Center, The Trace and Everytown for Gun Safety – all innocuously named, but all pushing policies in direct contradiction to the rights of United States gun owners.
Over the next few months, I’ll be digging into some of these positions and policies to try explain why there are not only dangerous, but completely and thoroughly illegal. Most importantly, I hope to show how these proposals will affect you. There simply isn’t enough space to cover the Biden anti-gun platform (https://joebiden.com/gunsafety) in one column, but I’ll give you a bitter taste of it and what’s to come. Here are the highlights: Reinstate the ban on ‘assault weapons’ and high capacity magazines, force existing owners of modern sporting rifles to sell their guns to the government or register them under the National Firearms Act, limit all firearm purchases to one a month, enact universal background checks for every single firearm transfer, prohibit the sale of any and all online sales of ammunition, firearms, parts and kits, and pressure states to pass ‘Red Flag’ laws, legalizing the confiscation of firearms. And that is the short list folks.