Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Firearms industry officials are warning that Joe Biden could still try to impose his plan to ban the possession, sale, and manufacture of modern sporting rifles if he assumes the presidency, even if the Democrat doesn’t have the votes in Congress to enact the centerpiece of his anti-gun agenda through legislation.
Mark Oliva, the director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, joins me on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. to talk about the biggest concerns that the firearms industry has about a potential Biden/Harris administration, and he says that a backdoor gun ban is on the table. According to Oliva, members of the Biden transition team are already exploring options to place AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles under the National Firearms Act without legislation, instead using the regulatory power of the ATF to redefine the rifles themselves.
The NSSF’s primary message to its industry partners at the moment is “take Biden at his word,” as the organization’s senior vice president and general counsel Larry Keane warned on Tuesday.
Biden made it crystal clear his thoughts on firearm manufacturers at the onset of the Democratic presidential primary race in July 2019.
“Our enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA, the gun manufacturers,” Biden said.
Biden’s gun control plan would criminalize private firearm sales, requiring every firearm transfer to be conducted through licensed firearm retailers. He’d also crack down on those retailers, using the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) as an anvil by which to crush businesses for even minor clerical errors in inspections. He argued for the same failed so-called mandatory “smart gun” technology for which he led a task force in the Obama administration. It wasn’t ready for testing then and it’s still not ready today.
That was the beginning of the Biden gun control agenda. That’s now burgeoned to include every radical gun control wish list item. It starts at a national state-by-state licensing scheme and rationing gun rights to just one sale per month for every law-abiding American.
That’s not all. He’d destroy the firearm industry by pushing to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, exposing manufacturers to harassing lawsuits by activist lawyers that long to bankrupt manufacturers for political means and use the courts to advance an agenda that doesn’t survive legislative scrutiny.
Be sure to check out the entire conversation with Mark Oliva in the video window above for more on the areas of concern for the firearms industry, including potential moves by the ATF to go after pistol braces and AR-style pistols themselves.
Coming up on tomorrow’s show, we’ll be exploring similar topics with the Firearms Policy Coalition’s Adam Kraut, with an extra focus on the Second Amendment-related litigation that could soon be heading to the Supreme Court.
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/11/11/gun-industry-warns-backdoor-biden-gun-ban/