Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
These days, President Joe Biden seems confused when it comes to just about everything. However, the longtime gun control advocate still saves some of his most fallacious and unintelligible comments for the firearms debate. Biden’s latest comments on gun legislation suggest that the president lacks even a rudimentary understanding of how firearms operate.
On October 23, Biden hosted NowThis News (a subsidiary of left-wing Vox Media) at the White House for a question and answer session. During an exchange with a questioner, Biden touted legislation he supports that would ban commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms. The addled politician stated, “my legislation says there can be no more than eight bullets in a round, OK?”
No Joe, you’re not OK.
The most charitable interpretation of Biden’s gibberish would be that the president is seeking to prohibit firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of eight rounds. However, even if this was what the enfeebled politician was attempting to communicate, the policy is incoherent.
In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that the Second Amendment protects the use of arms “in common use” for lawful purposes. Americans own hundreds of millions of firearm magazines with a capacity greater than eight or ten rounds.
The few jurisdictions that have adopted legislation restricting firearm magazines have settled on a capacity limit of 10 or 15 rounds. The exception to this was New York, when disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo rushed through the ill-titled NY SAFE Act in 2013.
The original SAFE Act limited gun owners to only seven rounds of ammunition but permitted the use of 10-round magazines due to the unavailability of magazines with a lesser capacity. This stratagem proved the common use of 10-plus round magazines.
In striking down the seven-round limit in NYSRPA v. Cuomo (2015), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit explained,
New York determined that only magazines containing seven rounds or fewer can be safely possessed, but it also recognized that seven-round magazines are difficult to obtain commercially. Its compromise was to permit gun owners to use ten-round magazines if they were loaded with seven or fewer rounds.
The court then determined, “we cannot conclude that New York has presented sufficient evidence that a seven-round load limit would best protect public safety.”
Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), which reaffirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms and reiterated the proper framework for addressing infringements on the Second Amendment right, courts should prove more skeptical of all ammunition capacity restrictions. Biden’s boutique eight-round proposal should be dismissed out of hand as illegal and unworkable.
There are some alternative interpretations of Biden’s bizarre words. By “eight bullets in a round,” perhaps the bewildered politician was referencing shotgun shells, which most often contain multiple projectiles per round.