Biden says 'second amendment is not absolute' after Texas shooting
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Biden on Wednesday called for more gun control after a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school left 19 children and two adults dead, arguing in a White House address that the "second amendment is not absolute."
Biden asked "when in God's name will we do what needs to be done" about the "amount of carnage that goes on in this country," as he pushed for what he called "common sense" gun control laws in the wake of one of the nation's worst shootings.
"While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will have significant impact and have no negative impact on the Second Amendment," Biden said of gun control laws, according to a video shared by the Associated Press.
"The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn't own a cannon, you couldn't own certain kinds of weapons. There's just always been limitations."
The president's comments drew intense criticism from conservatives and gun rights activists, who noted the Second Amendment's right to bear arms includes the words "shall not be infringed". One Florida senator earlier on Wednesday tweeted at Biden, "try to take our guns and you'll learn why the Second Amendment was written in the first place."
The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde ignited a firestorm, coming just 10 days after a mass shooting at a supermarket store in Buffalo, New York. The 18-year-old Texas gunman purchased two AR-15-style rifles legally before opening fire at the elementary school.
Democrats in Congress renewed calls to pass major gun control legislation, such as an expanded background check bill stalled in the House and a federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.
Biden, who helped pass the federal assault weapons ban while he was a senator, on Wednesday said he was astonished that the gunman walked into a store and purchased "weapons of war designed and marketed to kill."
The president also appeared to call out gun rights lobbyist groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), which is set to hold a conference this week in Houston, around 300 miles from the scene of the shooting.
"Where's the backbone? Where's the courage to stand up to a very powerful lobby?" Biden asked. "We're here today for the same purpose to come together and say, 'Enough.'"
Tags Biden Gun control Joe Biden mass shooting second amendment Texas Uvelda
The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.
Tags
Who is online
63 visitors
Even if I was totally against guns, I would have to admit that the 2nd Amendment is absolute. How does anybody who is the current president think otherwise?
There are three elements to these terrible incidents:
1) the individual
2) the weapon
3) motive or mental health
Democrats only focus on the gun.
Seeing that Abbott slashed $211million from the Texas department that oversees mental health and is last out of 50 States for access to it, just maybe you would like to revisit your inane partisan driven list.
Pffft!
What does point # 3 say?
Your last line tries to shift the blame. Of late it is what you are all about: tossing squirrels into a Skinner Box.
Shift the blame? From whom?
You ain't seen nothing yet ...
To whom!
All that education...wasted!
A conservative Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court said the 2nd Amendment is a fraud , and you think it can never be revisited? lol.
The fact is the Heller decision was very controversial. It was not the power of argument, but the makeup of the court in 2008 that produced the Heller decision.
Prior to 2008 there was no accepted legal rulings that affirmed an individual right to own guns. That is appx 220 years of no individual gun ownership. Why is that? What changed in recent decades? The amendment never changed , the arbitrary interpretation of it by right wing judges changed.
No, he said that the gun lobby interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is the fraud, by a special interest group. He did not say that the 2nd Amendment itself was a fraud. Can the Amendment be revisited? Of course it can, the founding fathers even put in the process to revisit and change it. Feel free to write to your congresscritters to get the ball rolling.
Are you trying to say that all the people who "owned" guns prior to 2008 were in fact breaking the law? Of is it more along the lines that left wing judges and left wing politicians attempted to block ownership by law-abiding people?
He was talking about the interpretation of the 2nd amendment being put forward by NRA lobbyists , which according to Burger, claimed something in the amendment that just was not there.
If the individual right to own guns is so obvious in the 2nd amendment, why did almost no one in this country believe that was the case before 1980 or so when the NRA changed course and began to lobby for a new interpretation? The NRA then and now is funded by gun manufacturers.
Heller was an arbitrary decision, not an obvious one.
The Supreme Court doesnt make laws, it upholds them or negates them. Yes we know individuals had guns prior to Heller. I assume that is because individual jurisdictions did not have laws preventing individual gun ownership. Things that are not illegal by law are presumed legal.
What Heller did was make laws barring gun ownership unconstitutional.
Yes he was. But your first statement was
You are the one in your very first sentence who stated that Burger said the 2nd Amendment is a fraud. Fix your sentence and this no longer is an issue.
And what else was happening during that time? Local districts were putting hard restrictions on gun ownership, the only was a citizen can fight back against that is to take the local government to court. They used the NRA money for the legal costs as the cost of suing the government (any from local thru state to fed) is rather expensive. And the NRA was glad to take up the fight.
Of course it is. If you are running a private organization who are you going to look at for donations, the local quilters circle or an industry that has deep pockets? I always felt the bitching about gun manufactures funding gun rights groups was stupid thinking. Who do you think funds pharmaceutical lobby groups?
No. What Heller v DC did was show that banning all handguns from private ownership was unconstitutional because the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep suitable weapons at home for self-defense unconnected to militia service.
I'm not changing my words because you are being petty, sorry.
If the second amendment grants individual ownership of guns, why was the country 220 years old before this was determined? Why was Scalia the only one with the brains to figure this out?
Prior to the NRA lobbyists coming along, everyone took it for granted that the second amendment referred to state run militia. Now we are supposed to take Scalias word for it that it means individual ownership? That would be fine if his argument was not in dispute, but it is and always has been. Justice Stevens wrote a very highly regarded dissenting opinion in the Heller case.
I understand that was the Heller decision. It is an arbitrary decision, not an obvious one. Because the language of the amendment is open to interpretation in the modern world, court decisions on the matter fall to which side has the most justices on the Court at the time of the decision.
I'm being petty? You're just fucking wrong. Your sentence is clear, that you try to move the goalposts after to try to say he was talking about the interpretation as put forth by the NRA (which is in the MEME you posted) clearly shows that you can see your written sentence was wrong but you refuse to back down. Go ahead, double down on stupid. Everybody here can read your words and know the truth.
You are hiding behind an interpretation that it referred to state run militia, there have been plenty of other interpretations that are different. Doesn't matter. Why did it start to become an issue, because around the same time states and cities were attempting to gain control of gun crime and as governments tend to do they went overboard in some areas. And citizens in those areas took the only legal means they could. The fact that there was dissenting opinion in the Heller case does not mean it was not adjudicated properly. Show me any SCOTUS case that was unanimous.
The Heller case was decided arbitrarily. It is the law of the land now because there were 5 conservatives and 4 liberals on the court at the time, not because Scalia was obviously right about the meaning of the amendment.
I'm only going to post part of this, to avoid deletion because an entire article was posted
His is one opinion, there are others that differ. What matters is what SCOTUS does, both now and in the future. At least until Congress works to change (amend) the 2nd Amendment (if they can).
No point in reading further when the author stoops to describing Berger as a “rock ribbed conservative.” Berger was famous for being anything but rock robbed, afraid of criticism or taking a stand.
It’s like calling sotomayor a measured moderate.
What can you expect from the White House Director of Speechwriting for Bill Clinton. Of course it's going to be biased..
My only complaint with that is when people are quick to point out the bias in the "other" party but ignore it from members of their own.
There are more issues here than guns.
Guns, guns guns. Only the left of the democrat party drinks the Kool-Aide.
Who was it that gave the mentally insane the fucking right to roam among us???
The 2nd amendment text hadnt changed , the court had. You had Scalia, a far right justice determined to leave his mark on the Court. He created a "right" to individual ownership of guns that was not the original intention of the 2nd amendment.
Now you all try to act like it was obvious all along. LOL.
That's fine John, but you forgot about the absolutely insane 18 year old who pulled the trigger.
What do we do with them?
You're the one who seeded an article about the second amendment here.
Typical that you site a far left activist group for your analysis. Guess who funds “civics nation?”
For an analysis of the supreme courts second amendment jurisprudence that is based in reality, read roughly pages 47-64 of the heller opinion.
That is correct and your president is wrong again!
Even the Washington Post has said that Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false.
Rights are good, but they are not absolute. There are limits to rights.
What about the mentally ill?
What about them?
Their rights?
Same as everyone else. But there are still limits to rights.
What do you mean? Should those who are a danger to themselves and others have the same rights as everyone else?
, but they are not absolute. There are limits to rights.
And Heller did not create an absolute right. Think of it as a compromise.
They already do. You seem to ignore the limitations of rights.
And you are conveniently ignoring the problem of putting the mentally ill out on the streets.
A strawman. We're talking rights, not homelessness.
Extended rights vs public safety
As I've said before, rights have limits.
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” - Justice Antonin Scalia
Seems President Biden's comment was in line with how the supreme court reads the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment is not absolute, it is not unlimited. President Biden was quite correct when he pointed this fact.
And to keep his 50 year streak going - Biden failed again.
He has the touch. Everything he touches turns to shit.
President Biden made a strong case very eloquently.
Not in my lifetime.
Maybe if the listener was blackout drunk.
The word "infringed" does not mean "abolished". Those words do not prevent the Second Amendment from being abolished. The huge number of American voting gun lovers are what will prevent it from being abolished and so "the beat goes on".
They never acknowledge the, "Well Regulated", part!
Who is they?
I'm all in favor of the "Well Regulated" part.
So just like that the constitution matters?
And what is this "they" garbage?
"Regulated" means "Regulated" not organized.
The word "Regulated" is redundant in the text.
Commerce is "Regulated". Trade "Regulated"...
You said we never acknowledge the "well regulated" part, well I gave you a link (from CNN of all places) that explains what "well regulated" means both in the confines of the 2nd Amendment and the time when the amendment was written. In the Second Amendment it's "A well-regulated militia".. In order to understand the words you need to also understand what the words meant when they are put to paper.
Whenever congress so desires
Of course the United States of America is a much younger and much less mature nation than the UK where they actually DID something about the problem and IT WORKED.
Some excerpts - of a somewhat similar massacre (LINK) ->
CAVEAT: This article is about 14 months old, it is from March 2021, and I'm not aware if there have been any mass shootings in the UK since that time.
We also passed strict gun laws in the US in the 90's.
They didn't work.
Maybe they only work in more civilized countries.
More "common senseless" gun laws or "universal" background checks would not have stopped this scumbag sicko, or prevented any of the other mass shootings.
Locked doors might have helped.
There are roughly 130,000 K-12 schools in the US. The US has given $53,000,000,000 to Ukraine. That could have been roughly $400,000 in security / Education per school. Looks like the focus of our politicians is on the wrong countries.
Well.. yes and no. While I'm not going to talk about Ukraine and corruption, I would hope that this country had learned it's lesson from WWII in that we cannot ignore when one country invades / abuses a smaller country and subjugate its population. Instead there was over $100 billion in lost Covid relief money. Had they put better controls in place that money could have instead been used for this. Not to mention how much money has been wasted by the federal government in all the years since Sandy Hook or Columbine when it was first understood that this sort of security was needed.
That's another misuse of funds.
I didn't make it past this part. He is right "when in God's name will we do what needs to be done" and impeach his sorry damn ass! I don't give a damn that the Republicans will not have the seats in the Senate to do it after midterms even if they win every seat that is up! They need to make an example out of Brandon that will last forever. Democrats have lowered the standards on impeachment to the point there aren't any. Time to pick that bar back up and impeach Brandon as many times as it takes. He either gets the message and retires; or is so damn shattered he retreats to his basement for the rest of his term in office.
Brandon promised to lead as a moderate; and unite the country. He caved instantly to the far left, bat shit crazy, TDS driven, morons of his party once in office. He has united the country in one thing only; hatred. Thankfully the majority seem to hate Brandon and the Democrats; so at least it is properly directed.
I am an atheist, so your meme means nothing to me.
Since when do Democrats ever take responsibility for the destruction and devastation they have wrought? They blame Putin, Republicans, Trump (their #1 go to in any circumstance), and the all encompassing far right white supremacist. Seems you want to bring God into this; much like Brandon. Are the others not working for you; so you are moving on to a "higher power"?
So you're saying that America must have a lot more mentally ill persons, radical Islamists and criminals than other CIVILIZED nations in order to achieve the numbers that cause the whole world to shake its head?
I'm saying America gave everybody extended "rights!"
Well, seeing the results of that just might make it seem that those "rights" were somewhat OVERextended.
Agreed.