Joe Biden Vows to “Defeat the NRA” if He is Elected President

On the seventh anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, former Vice President Joe Biden released a statement touting his gun control plan. In the statement, Biden assured voters that he was the Democrat who could successfully point to a record of success against the gun lobby.

“I said when I got into this race that I’m running to restore the soul of America,” he said. “Few things make the need for that more clear than school shootings – what kind of nation are we if we simply accept that kids learn active shooter drills with their ABCs? I know that we can defeat the NRA. I’m the only candidate in the race who has done it before – twice, when I was in the Senate. As president I’ll do it again.”

Biden, who is running as a “moderate” in a race that includes radicals like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, would be the most liberal president in 50 years if he were to be elected. His gun control plan may seem reasonable when put next to clueless authoritarians like Mike Bloomberg and Beto O’Rourke, but it is plenty worrisome.

It would include a repeal of a federal law aimed at protecting gun manufacturers from civil liability lawsuits – a move that, in and of itself, would devastate the gun industry. It would also ban the sale of so-called “assault weapons,” ban high-capacity magazines, and would create a system of universal background checks…whatever that means these days.

“There’s a straight line from the brave parents of Newtown, many of whom have organized at the grassroots level and in the courts, to the activism of the Parkland students, to the millions of others who’ve said ‘enough’ in the long years between and since then,” Biden said. “This call for change is growing louder and louder, and is using every tool of our democracy, in the streets, voting booths, and courts.”

We could be behind the eight ball on this one, but we continue to believe that gun control is a losing issue for 2020 Democrats. They are vastly underestimating the number of (must have) Democrat voters who own guns and are extremely wary of the party’s anti-gun platform. If they move to make this issue front and center, they could easily lose voters they could have otherwise counted on – especially if we’re talking rural areas of Pennsylvania and the Obama/Trump districts of the Midwest.

Unfortunately, this is one of those issues where Republicans don’t quite have the guts for a real fight, which leaves Democrats free to blather on about gun control without any decent pushback.