Now that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has exited the Democratic presidential primary, former Vice President Joe Biden is picking up the mantle of Gun-Controller in Chief. 

Biden has received endorsements from all the usual suspects in the gun control movement including former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety. Those endorsements are to be expected, but Biden recently announced that he brought on former rival Beto O’Rourke to help with gun control policy.

Not that Biden needs any advice, but bringing Beto on to help with the “gun problem,” includes bringing on Beto’s baggage. While Beto was still in the primary race, and shortly after he said, “Hell yes, I’m taking your AR-15s,” he visited Aurora, CO to promote his gun control agenda. He wasn’t prepared for a pro-gun Columbine survivor to confront him, nor for a restaurant owner whose waitresses all open carry to tell him, “Hell no, you won’t take our guns.” 

A short twelve days later, Beto dropped out of the race. Apparently, Americans don’t take too kindly to someone promising to take their guns.

Would Biden be better off talking about gun control without Beto’s help? That prospect is almost worse.

When Biden recently visited a Michigan auto plant, a worker confronted him about his promise to confiscate guns. Biden told the worker, “You are full of sh**!” 

But was he? 

In an August interview on CNN, Biden was asked, “So to gun owners out there who say a Biden administration means they’re going to come for my guns,” and before the question was finished, Biden responded, “Bingo. You’re right if you have an assault weapon. The fact of the matter is, they should be illegal.”

Glad we cleared that up.

But surely Biden knows enough about firearms to pass judgement on guns and gun owners? Not so fast. In 2013, Biden gave advice to a reader of Parenting magazine who was concerned about her self-defense if certain firearms were banned. His advice was, “Get a double-barreled shotgun, have the shells of a 12-gauge shotgun, and I promise you, as I told my wife, we live in an area that’s wooded and is somewhat secluded. I said Jill, if there is ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony and put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house, and I promise you whoever is coming in is not, you don’t need an AR-15.”

Not only does his “advice” break all of the firearms safety rules, but certainly the Secret Service would have had concerns about one of their protectees randomly firing a shotgun.

Biden’s other lack of understanding about guns includes:

  • In the confrontation with the Michigan auto worker, Biden mentioned taking away AR-14s, which is not a gun model name.
  • Biden said he would ban guns that don’t have specific “smart gun” technology, biometric triggers that don’t yet exist.
  • Biden claimed that 150 million Americans have died due to gun violence since 2007. With a US population of 329 million people, surely we’d have noticed that.
  • Biden’s reference to magazines with 100 clips in them. That’s just a mish-mash of gun words that don’t go together that way. 

People with the least knowledge about firearms, firearm safety, and knowledge of gun owners in general, should not be in a position to enact firearm policy. With or without Beto O’Rourke at his side, Joe Biden’s gun control policies are likely to fall flat with the American voters.