OPINION:
Even The Washington Post has its limits.
When President Biden tried to claim the Second Amendment bans private citizens from owning cannons — as a means of making the case for common-sense gun control — even the fact-checkers at the left-leaning, liberal-supporting Washington Post had to, well, check his facts.
First, Biden’s claim. He said, during a speech about firearms-related violence last week, The Hill reported: “And I might add, the Second Amendment, from the day it 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.”
That’s not just stupid.
After all, if you’re trying to make a case for common-sense gun control, why argue about cannons? Has there been a run on cannon violence the media has curiously failed to report?
Have there been cannon-related deaths in recent times that have gone largely unreported?
Cannon violence in today’s world: Is it really a thing?
So it’s not just stupid, it’s also historically, factually wrong.
“Everything in [Biden’s] statement is wrong,” said David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the Independent Institute, to The Washington Post. Number one: Prior to the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791, “there were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own,” Kopek said.
Oops.
But this wasn’t Biden’s first time making the remark.
To Wire magazine months ago, he also said, “You weren’t allowed to own a cannon during the Revolutionary War as an individual.”
For his more recent remark, Biden earned The Washington Post’s distinctive four Pinocchios label — the biggest slap-down for a lie it gives.
“Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objecting,” wrote fact-checker Glenn Kessler.
Yes.
But that’s how gun control arguments often go: the anti-Second Amendment side always fails to give proper and due credence to facts.
A cannon’s a 9 mm Pop-Tart chewed into the shape of a gun, to the left.
In the end, the left’s message is all the same: Give up the guns. The Second Amendment is for hunting for food. The government’s got your back — no need for self-protection.
But condemning gun ownership by arguing it’s one and the same as cannon ownership — that’s a new low, even for Democrats.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.