At Townhall: Can Democrats Even Believe What They Are Claiming About Guns?
Dr. John Lott has a new piece at Townhall.
.
You have to wonder if Democrats know anything about the gun control laws they vote on. That is on something as simple as the recent votes on pistol-stabilizing braces.
.
Under new rules from the Biden administration, gun owners possessing pistol-stabilizing braces must now remove the brace, register it and pay a fee, or forfeit or destroy it. The House voted to overturn these regulations by a 219-210 vote, including two Democrats voting for the measure and two Republicans voting against it. But Senate Democrats defeated the move on a straight party-line 50-49 vote. Not even Democrats from high gun-owning states, such as Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), voted to rescind the regulation.
.
Stabilizing braces were originally designed to allow veterans with hand disabilities to hold handguns, not for mass shooters to commit a crime more effectively. The braces are straps that allow the disabled person to keep hold of the gun when it recoils. Without a gun and a steady aim, disabled people are very vulnerable to criminals. But Democrats will never mention that.
.
But you would never know that. A week ago, President Biden explained how when you “put a pistol on a brace, it turns into a gun.” Of course, a pistol is already a gun. Or how about his claim that the brace “Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon — a higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun”? Of course, if you are worried about recoil, why not just use a rifle — heavier guns dampen the recoil, and rifles weigh more.
.
But while it is easy to dismiss Biden as not knowing what he is talking about, you have to wonder if others are deliberately misleading people. Take the two statements during the Senate debate on Thursday by the two leading Democrats in the Senate – Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). No one worries that either is suffering from dementia.
.
“We all know that because of all the ammunition magazines that can be strapped on to so many pistols that these become automatic weapons similar to AK-47s,” Durbin claimed. “Pistols with stabilizing braces, have a reputation in this modern America, though they have been formally forbidden and prohibited, regulated for almost 90 years.”
.
“If you have ever seen a gunman fire what looks like a machine gun with just one hand, that’s what pistol braces allow you to do,” Schumer says.
.
The notion that adding a strap to a gun can change a semi-automatic handgun into a machine gun is absurd. Semi-automatic guns fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. The fully automatic machine guns used by the military keep firing bullets as long as the trigger is pressed. They have completely different firing mechanisms, and adding a strap on to the gun isn’t going to make any difference. The notion that “they have been formally forbidden and prohibited, regulated for almost 90 years” is thus also irrelevant. However, it isn’t obvious how a gun can be simultaneously forbidden and regulated.
.
But one wonders if Senator Durbin knows the bullets that different guns fire. AK-47 rifles fire bullets that are much bigger than normal handgun bullets. A few expensive specialty handguns use AK-47 bullets, but no mass public shootings ever used these guns. Stabilizing braces have only been used in two mass public shooting (Dayton, Ohio, in 2019 and Boulder, Colorado, in 2021), but there is no evidence that the braces made any difference in these attacks.
.
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) explained these points to Democrats, and he couldn’t persuade a single Democrat.
.
But if Democrats know that adding a brace to a semi-automatic handgun doesn’t turn it into a machine gun, why do they make such bizarre claims? Do they really believe voters are that naïve? Amazingly, Democrats think they can even fool voters in states such as Montana and West Virginia.
.
