In a move that can inspire worry, anger, and righteous indignation – and also can inspire frustration over how some media outlets report the story – Joe Biden September 26 signed a two-pronged and astoundingly unconstitutional, even arrogant Executive Order.
And Biden’s action not only gives us an opportunity to see just how authoritarian and immoral the man is, it lets us see that even popular conservative media can let authoritarian assumptions and language slip into their reporting.
Jacob Burg and Michael Clements report for the Epoch Times:
“President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 26 to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve active shooter drills in schools throughout the country.”
But the opening of their report embraces numerous statist assumptions. Working from back to front, we can see that they assume Biden’s order will “improve active shooter drills in school throughout the country.”
In other words, Mr. Burg and Mr. Clements accept the language of the Biden Administration. The authors might think they are telling readers that it’s the Biden gang CLAIMING the order will “improve” active shooter drills, but by not explicitly stating, “President Joe Biden signed an executive order that the Administration CLAIMS will crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve active shooter drills,” the authors accept without question the Bidenista assertion that the orders actually have the intended or purported effect. This acceptance of a government-asserted cause-effect relationship is extremely dangerous, and lies at the base of even the philosophical errors leading to support of bigger government.
The added lack of scrutiny about the Biden description of these “3-D printed guns” and the lack of skepticism over whether Biden can issue such orders, or whether even the Congress could try to impose its members’ will on us in these regards – that lack of scrutiny also is hazardous.
They add:
“The first prong of the order targets machine gun conversion devices—which can convert a pistol or semi-automatic gun into an automatic—and 3D-printed guns.”
To their credit, the authors offer a bit more amplification, noting:
“Under federal law, a machine gun is a firearm that fires continuously while the trigger is depressed.
Commonly called ‘Glock switches’ or ‘auto sears,’ machine gun conversion devices are illegal after-market parts that alter a gun’s trigger to allow legal semi-automatic firearms to operate as illegal, fully automatic weapons.”
Unfortunately, the authors mistakenly accept the government-pushed falsehood that there is such as thing as a “semi-automatic” firearm.
There is only auto and one-trigger-pull-one-round. There is no in-between.
The authors also quote the Biden Administration’s alarmist language that implies a problem among people who have an inherent right to keep and defensively bear any kind of arm they desire.
“The White House noted that, between 2017 and 2021, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF) recovered 5,454 guns that had been converted to match or ‘exceed the rate of fire of many military machineguns with a single engagement of the trigger.’”
The authors do not question how those guns were “recovered” or why. Were the owners engaging in aggressive activity? Were they simply in possession of those items, and victims of unlawful and immoral state gun seizure? How many actually were in personal ownership, and how many were in gun shops, where they are supposed to be free to sell the guns without unwarranted snooping by the feds, per the FOURTH AMENDMENT?
We don’t know, because the authors merely report the Biden claims. They do not dig into those claims or ask why the guns were “recovered,” in the first place.
And they make matters worse by adding:
“In the order, Biden indicated he would like the law expanded to also ban devices like bump stocks that increase a shooter’s rate of fire but don’t mechanically alter the gun. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns under current federal law.”
Thus, while correctly noting the fact that Biden’s Executive Order follows a Supreme Court ruling (on the case of Loper-Bright Enterprises v Raimondo) that stopped his BATF from unilaterally expanding its bans to include “bump stocks,” the authors leave readers wondering what they mean by “the law.” Do the Epoch Times writers intend that to mean the set of laws on the books in the US, implying that Biden would like those statutes to include a new bump stock ban, or do they mean to imply that his Executive Orders are “laws” and he would like to add bump stocks to that list, even thought that kind of activity already was ruled verboten by the SCOTUS? Additionally, why bring it up in the midst of discussing the core issue of the “Glock switches” at the heart of his Executive Order?
Do they mean that Biden expressed disappointment over the fact that his previous attempt to ban bump stocks via EO was shot down by the Supreme Court, but he now is repeating the pattern in his attempt to ban another item that can increase the rate of fire for non-auto guns?
Whether done via Executive Order or by passage of a law, the bans are unconstitutional and immoral.
And what of 3-D printed guns?
They write:
“The executive order targets 3D-printed firearms built with 3D printers using computer code downloaded from the internet. They lack serial numbers, making them difficult for law enforcement to trace.
Unserialized guns are often referred to as ‘ghost guns.’”
No agency of any form of government has any authority to tell anyone that they have to have a “code number” or “identifier” on a gun in order to sell or legally own it. Such a diktat is not only prohibited by the Second Amendment, it is prohibited by the First Amendment (because it forces gun sellers, buyers, and owners, to print information on the gun) and the Fourth Amendment (which prohibits any level of government from invading private property without a public warrant, issued by a judge, upon the judge’s determination of “probable cause” to search a specific person for a specific, named, item).
The canard that many politicians, and many reporters, sell to people is that the flow of guns from one person to another might include people who could use those guns for nefarious purposes, therefore, the serial numbers are important, to trace them to the source.
But this not only assumes the infringements of rights noted above, it assumes that the initial exchanges, even if they were by people who had committed crimes in other ways, were, themselves, criminal acts.
Under the original concept of government embraced by the Founders, the only times governments are supposed to investigate the sales of firearms, is if those firearms are put up for sale as a result of a criminal act. If a gun is stolen, then government can investigate the theft, like its agents would any other theft of any other item.
Are we to make all baseball bats carry serial numbers to “trace” their origins and punish people for peacefully selling them if the end-user hurts someone with a bat? How about knives? Hammers?
Once one understands the normative level of peaceful free market exchange, one can see the absurdity, the selectivity, and the tyranny of this “gun serial number mandate” canard.
Related: Major Pyrrhic Victory: Supreme Court Blocks Trump's ATF 'Bump-Stock Ban'
Add the authors:
“Through the order, the White House will establish an emerging firearms threats task force that will generate a report within 90 days to assess the threat of these guns, how federal agencies can mobilize to combat, detect, and confiscate them, and congressional funding projections to limit these weapons.”
Yeah, enjoy finding that in the US Constitution. And have fun trying to find the so-called “authority” for the feds to do this:
“The order’s second portion aims to improve active school shooter drills in the nation’s schools. The Biden administration has reported that schools lack adequate resources for conducting these drills and that parents fear potential trauma for students from the drills.
Biden’s order directs the secretaries for the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security—in coordination with Attorney General Merrick Garland—to create and publish informational resources for schools to reduce and minimize trauma from shooter drills and gives them 110 days to do so.”
My dad worked for the Reagan Administration trying to dismantle the unconstitutional Department of Education. He left, telling the family that he and his coworkers (such as Charlotte Iserbyt, who also left at the same time) could tell that the Department of Education was going to continue, regardless of its lack of any constitutional authority.
Yet, how many Americans will include criticism of that unconstitutionality when they criticize the extra move by Biden to start messing with “active shooter drills” at local schools?
The collectivism of schools on a local level, and the inability of tax-eating powers to cater to everyone’s ideas of safety, are amplified by federal claims of control or influence. And the pandering of politicians like Biden will not change this fact, nor will his team be able to change the fact that they are forbidden from infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.
Thus, reports of this kind of Executive Branch activity are frustrating, but they give us opportunities to learn, and help others remember the rules under which these political parasites are supposed to operate.