Biden, 2nd Amendment, and Reason

The Biden Administration is patently anti-gun, pushing a number of capricious executive orders, legal positions, and legislative measures intended to clip, perhaps eventually emasculate, the 2^nd Amendment. But perspective is also important. Conservative reactions should be rational, thoughtful, not hysterical. 

No doubt should exist in the public mind that society is awash in violence, for lots of reasons – open borders, permissive drug trafficking, reduced support for police, incitement by politically motivated activists, plus inattention to harmony, social cohesion, those who fan hate, a failure to educate.

At our best – what we should be reminding each other, and teaching all younger Americans – that we aspire to be a good people, our “neighbors’ keeper,” and “one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.”  Yes, our neighbor’s keeper, faith in God, liberty, Justice for All.  Sadly, public trust is sliding.

So, what happens when public trust – in government, social cohesion, safety, border security, anti-drug actions, police funding and support – begins to slide? Is it not obvious? Fear grows.

And what happens when fear grows? People decide to protect themselves. This happens – and happened – in all times and places, curtailed only by oppression, which generally fails.  In pre-free India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, and nations back to the dawn of time, freedom-loving people prepare, arm, and feel the need to protect.

So, how does that relate to now?  Simple.  People – women and men, adult older and younger, rural, urban and suburban, various minorities and – however you assess the majority – are buying guns.

Here is the data: Gun sales in the US tripled between 2005 and 2020. While gun sales picked up during Obama’s tenure, they went vertical during the pandemic – and after Biden became president – with 18 percent of all American households buying guns between March 2020 and March 2022 alone.

Compounding public loss of faith in government’s desire and ability to protect families, the pandemic raised armed households from 32 percent to 46 percent, with 7.5 million Americans becoming new gun owners between 2019 and 2021. And 20 million who already owned guns, bought more guns.

In a nation with 400 million legal firearms, Americans – with growing fear for their lives and families’ safety, untrusting of government, self-reliant – bought another 60 million between 2019 and 2021.

We Americans, whatever else you wish to say about us, are thoughtful when we need to be – we value our sense of preparedness, senses of humor, perspective, generosity – and our personal safety. When the government fails, or worse becomes a promotor of disarming the citizens, do not expect that to fly.

And let us dispose of a few myths right here.  These are not big, dumb, deterrence obsessed, testosterone- or muscle-heavy white males buying new guns. More than half of all new gun owners – are women.

And equally enlightening, minorities are leading the drive for self-protection, in the absence of political support for the police, and as their neighborhoods are ravaged by drug violence and crime. Black gun ownership, as federal and private records affirm, is rising fast. In fact, a record number of blacks are registering and buying firearms.

All of this is prelude, or a foundation, for stories now emerging about the Biden Administration – which plainly despises these numbers, rising gun ownership, a focus on self-protection, public self-help and awareness that Biden and his gung-ho justice activists have actually been making us all less safe.

The Biden White House, pushing ATF to get tough on gun dealers, the way 85,000 newly hired IRS agents – many armed – are getting tough on taxpayers, has initiated over the past year a new policy.  They have begun to crack down on federal gun dealers, who do business under a license. They are pulling licenses.

This has caused the gun industry to “cry foul,” as they rightly should – since nothing objectively has changed in America, certainly not favoring fewer public firearms dealers. On the numbers again – as facts are stubborn things – 2021 saw 21 federal arms dealers get licenses pulled. In fiscal 2023, not yet even over, FIVE times that number have been pulled, already 122.

Okay, now – is this a trend? Yes. Is this likely harassment? Sure looks that way, but the issue is starting to see some light. Is this reason for concern? Yes, since any marked change in the 2^nd Amendment’s promise of access to arms and ammunition is an instant constitutional issue.

But is this reason for hysteria, rather than rational legal, legislative, and political pushback? No. No? No. Here is why. As of 2022, we have 52,910 federal firearms dealers. Texas alone has more than 10,000, and on the blue side, California has more than 8,000.  Americans want their guns, and so far the trend is modest.

Is all this reason to take a deep breath, breathe easy, think that our Second Amendment is free from capricious executive orders, legal actions, legislative, or judicial emasculation? No. 

Notably, one former Supreme Court Justice – a left-leaner replaced by a more left-leaner, Justice Stevens replaced by non-judge Harvard dean Elana Kagan – argued we should repeal the 2^nd Amendment.

What we should do is what rational Americans, defending their God-given rights, including self-protection, have always done – speak up, write, protest, run for office, and defend with words, dollars, votes, and conviction the rights to which we are all entitled, men and women, all hues and views.

Biden’s team is after the 2^nd Amendment, but they have a ways to go in a nation with 400 million guns, 350 million people who think rights matter, 52,000 federal firearm dealers, and reason on their side.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.