President Joe Biden issued his anti-gun executive orders with much fanfare. The media gobbled it up and ran numerous stories of just how strong a stance the president took to advance the cause of gun control.
However, did he actually do much of anything?
Well, let’s see what the NRA has to say on the topic, shall we?
When President Joe Biden (D) recently gave a speech in Monterey Park, Calif., announcing his latest executive order on guns, the so-called “mainstream” media lapped it up.
“Biden Issues Executive Order to Expand Background Checks For Gun Purchases,” read a Reuters headline. Others, including foreign media, quickly jumped on the bandwagon. “U.S. President Signs New Executive Order Expanding Gun Background Checks,” read another. Even Fox News got in on the act, headlining their story, “Biden Announces Executive Order To Expand Gun Background Checks.”
In reality, Biden doesn’t have the authority to “expand” background checks, whether he knows it or not. The order actually directs various federal agencies to make life more difficult for firearms dealers that already obey the law—something Biden has been trying to do ever since taking office. As he knows, making it more difficult to sell guns makes it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to buy them.
The confusion of the headline writers likely came from the “Fact Sheet” distributed by the White House before the text of the executive order was released. It read: “Today, in Monterey Park, California, President Biden will announce an Executive Order with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales, moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.”
That goal will not be met with this order.
The NRA’s post goes into more detail, but basically, this doesn’t really do anything except, at most, press the ATF to redefine how many sales constitute dealing guns.
Beyond that, it really can’t do much else. That would require a significant change in the law, one beyond Biden’s power to actually do with a stroke of a pen.
He just doesn’t have that kind of authority.
But the media would love for you to think otherwise. Perception is, in a lot of ways, more important than reality. If you think Biden can do it, no one will blink if he actually does it. It won’t matter what’s in the Constitution.
Not that he’d get away with it. The Courts know better, of course, and even anti-gun courts will set a limit.
Yet if people think that we’re near-universal background checks already, there’s less likely to be as much pushback if it’s proposed. “We practically have it now,” someone will argue in an effort to make it seem less radical than it actually is.
Still, there’s a lot of hullabaloo about what Biden did, but he really did absolutely nothing. It really sums up his presidency as a whole, really.
Make no mistake, though, there’s absolutely nothing on the table with regard to gun control he won’t do if he gets the chance. We just can’t let him have that opportunity.
