Biden overstates power of 9mm handguns, says Second Amendment ‘never absolute’

by mcardinal

Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

 

President Joe Biden seemed to have misused the term 9-millimeter – or in some other way jumbled his thoughts – as he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn Monday morning. 

In remarks following the landing of Marine One, Biden referred to the 9mm, the most popular style of handgun sold in the United States, as high caliber and overstated the weapon’s power, then launched into a rehash of his beliefs about the limitations of the Second Amendment.

The president recalled previously having met with an emergency room doctor to discuss gun deaths in the U.S.

“Look, when I first started doing hearings on the issue of what rational gun laws should be, it was during a period when I was a senator and the death rate was going up,” Biden said. “Not that many more people were being shot, but the death rate was up.  And when I think of — I’m not sure, I think it was (inaudible) hospital in New York — whatever the largest trauma hospital is.

“And I sat with a trauma doctor, and I asked him — I said, ‘What’s the difference?  Why are so many people…’ — and not that many more people were being shot.  This is now 20 years ago, or 25 years.  I said, ‘Why are they dying?’ And they showed me x-rays.  He said, ‘A .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out, may be able to get it and save the life.  A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.’

“So the idea of these high-caliber weapons is of — there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.”

There were numerous factual issues with the president’s remarks, not least of which was his referring to a 9mm as high-caliber. The handgun is a small- or medium-caliber weapon. While powerful enough to cause death, is highly unlikely that a shot from this type of weapon would result in the type of bodily damage the Biden described.

Breitbart consulted numerous ballistic experts, all of whom agreed that a 9mm round, even if hollow point, would not possess enough power to create such a wound.

It is unclear if the president misunderstood the nature of the 9mm, or if he mistakenly referred to a more powerful weapon as a 9mm.

Prior to his story, Biden was discussing weapons that fire up to 300 rounds or that could fire 100 shots, presumably out of a single magazine (he did not specify). As a 9mm can do neither of these, the more likely explanation is the president lost his train of thought, told a story about 9mm handguns in the late 1990s, then returned to his original thought about, one must assume, assault-style weapons.

Whatever the reality, President Biden indicated he would not, and believed he could not, use an executive order to ban any weapon.

“[There’s] a Constitution,” Biden said. “I can’t dictate this stuff.  I can do the things that I’ve done.  And any executive action I can take, I’ll continue to take.  But I can’t outlaw a weapon.  I can’t, you know, change the background checks.  I can’t do that.”

The president then launched into a familiar attack on popular interpretations of the Constitution and, in what might prove a bigger gaffe than his firearm terminology struggles, chose Memorial Day as the moment to dismiss pro-gun arguments with a snarky modification of a saying long meant to honor patriots who paid the ultimate price.

“Remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute,” Biden said.

Biden followed his statement by misconstruing history in an attempt to back-up his statements.

You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.  You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.

“And those who — not many are saying it anymore, but there was a while there where people were saying that, you know, the Tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of patriots, and what we have to do is you have to be able to take on the government when they’re wrong.  Well, to do that, you need an F-15, you know?  Or you need an Abrams tank.”

The president has, dating to 2021, frequently and inaccurately claimed Americans couldn’t buy a cannon in the early 1800s, and has bragged about the helplessness of the everyday American in the face of the might of the U.S. military.

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