President Joe Biden unveiled a series of executive actions this week aimed at limiting access to firearms and tightening regulations on who can purchase and own them. Compared to the extreme gun control measures Biden has been talking about, these policies are much more subdued. But it’s clear this is just the beginning of a much broader, more restrictive agenda.
There are six new policies Biden plans to roll out. First, the Justice Department will create model “red flag” laws for states. These are also known as “gun violence restraining orders.” There are good arguments for red flag laws, which target lawbreakers with restrictions on their freedom that are narrowly tailored to protecting the innocent. This is rightly a state matter — it’s fitting that Biden isn’t proposing federal red flag laws.
The Justice Department will also begin publishing an annual report on gun trafficking, and the administration will invest in community violence intervention programs. Both of these are commonsense reforms that don’t infringe gun owners’ civil liberties as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
This always ought to be the first test of any proposed gun regulation: How does it affect the law-abiding gun owner? On this test, Biden’s other proposals fail.
Biden would require the Justice Department to create a new rule “to make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act.” The only purpose of this policy is to undo Supreme Court precedent and subject more innocent gun-owners to federal regulation, including registration requirements. The notion that a device with lawful functions should become restricted (to only those who register it) because there are ways to use it for illegal purposes is not a notion any free people ought to accept.
Biden also wants to crack down on “ghost guns,” self-assembled firearms that don’t fall under a legal classification and are therefore exempt from mandatory background checks and serial numbers. It is totally legal in America for people to build their own firearms. Biden wants to make sure that it is as difficult as possible to do so.
We’ll have to wait for the legal text proposed by the Justice Department, but it is likely Biden will go after the businesses that supply self-assembly firearm kits. Again, the point here is to restrict access.
Do criminals build ghost guns? Perhaps a small number do. But again, a free country does not treat the whole population as criminals. The existence of ghost guns makes regulating firearm ownership more difficult. This is not a bad thing, as the nation’s Founding Fathers would agree. In a modern context, it forces the authorities to abandon the foolish pursuit of gun-control laws, whose main effect has always been to tack longer sentences onto defendants who are even more disproportionately nonwhite than those prosecuted for drug crimes. Once the discriminatory fool’s errand of gun control has been abandoned, policymakers will have to focus on anti-crime initiatives that have a chance of actually working.
The last part of Biden’s initiative is his appointment of David Chipman, a gun-control advocate, to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Chipman has described himself as a “proud gun owner” who has been mischaracterized as a “gun grabber,” but he has endorsed controversial policies in the past, including restricting high-capacity magazines. Most recently, Chipman claimed it was concerning that so many first-time gun buyers were purchasing firearms during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s attempt to restrict ghost guns and stabilizing braces will be the policies to watch closely. He is clearly trying to test the waters to see whether these restrictions hold up. If they do, he will undoubtedly pursue an even more aggressive agenda. He’s already promised as much.
