It appears that Joe Biden is unwilling, or worse yet unable, to let the facts get in the way of his promotion of more gun controls for Americans, and he's being called out for that by a constitutional expert.
Jonathan Turley, a popular analyst and commentator on the Constitution and professor at George Washington University, posted a column this week in the wake of Biden's comments that were prompted by the mass murder in Texas of children in a school.
He headlined his commentary, "President Biden repeats false claim about the Second Amendment," and explained Biden's falsehood, showing he remained "undeterred and uninformed," came in his claim, "The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn't own a cannon, you couldn't own certain kinds of weapons. There's just always been limitations."
It's a popular refrain for Biden, who earlier publicly claimed, "The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn't buy a cannon."
And, he falsely claimed, "By the way – it's going to sound bizarre – I support the Second Amendment. But from the very beginning the Second Amendment didn't say you could own any gun you want, as big as you want. You couldn't buy a cannon, when in fact the Second Amendment passed."
"The statement that the Second Amendment is not absolute is certainly true. There are laws that can be crafted within the confines set out under controlling Supreme Court precedent," Turley explained.
But Biden, he said, "continues to ignore those constitutional limitations in blaming the gun lobby and political opponents for these deaths."
"There were no federal laws barring cannon ownership when the Second Amendment was enacted. Gun laws remained local matters and I do not know of any bans on cannons or other gun types until much later in our history. Early local laws did control concealed weapons, though concealed cannons were not part of those ordinances," Turley explained.
"Indeed, the Constitution itself supports private cannon ownership in the case of privateers. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 allows Congress to 'grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.' That allowed private parties to privateer on the high seas with . . . cannons."
"As with the failure to acknowledge the limitations on the range of legislative options due to Second Amendment protections, President Biden is undermining efforts to reach common ground with this repeated false claim. If we are going to reach what the president calls 'commonsense' responses to this massacre, we must start from a common understanding of the constitutional and historical foundations for such reforms," he said.
He explained Biden's claims are "factually and legally untrue."
"I have received calls from media for years about this claim and it does not improve by repetition," he said.
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