Presumptive Democrat nominee former Vice President Joe Biden went into a tirade during an interview with “Wired” magazine. During the sit-down interview, he once again proved he knows little about US history and promised to restrict Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights.
Biden was asked about gun control and immediately went after Americans owning AR-15’s which he said, “should be outlawed.” He continued, “From the very beginning you weren’t allowed to have certain weapons. You weren’t allowed to own a cannon during the Revolutionary War as an individual.”
Once again Biden is 100% wrong, not only could private individuals own them but during the Revolutionary War, they could even own their own ship armed with them.
The National Park Service explains:
Privateering encompassed two levels of participation. A Letter of Marque authorized armed merchant ships to challenge any likely enemy vessel that crossed its path during the course of a commercial voyage. A Privateer Commission was issued to vessels, called privateers or cruisers, whose primary objective was to disrupt enemy shipping. The ideal target was an unarmed, or lightly armed, commercial ship.
With the passage of an act on March 23, 1776, the Continental Congress formalized the commissioning process, and uniform rules of conduct were established. Owners of privateers had to post monetary bonds to ensure their proper conduct under the regulations.
Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 Letters of Marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers and are credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.
Vessels of every size and description were pressed into service as privateers. At the upper end of the scale was the 600-ton, 26-gun ship Caesar of Boston. At the other end was the 8-ton boat Defense of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Crews ranged from a few men in a whaleboat to more than 200 aboard a large, fully equipped privateer. Two-masted schooners and brigantines were most often used in privateering, reflecting the kind of vessels available to American seamen.
Politifact – a fact-checking website – heard about Biden’s little rant and reached out to historians and experts on early American history not one of them could find any source backing up Biden’s claim. However, they all agreed that it was highly unlikely that there were any laws banning the possession of field pieces like a cannon.
“It seems highly unlikely that there were restrictions on the private ownership” of cannons, said Julie Anne Sweet, a historian and director of military studies at Baylor University.
David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the free-market Independence Institute, agreed. “I am not aware of a ban on any arm in colonial America,” he said. “There were controls on people or locations, but not bans on types of arms.”
Politifact also reached out for an example to back up Biden’s claim, they could not and just resorted to their anti-gun talking points.
But the Biden campaign was unable to point to a specific law. “The vice president’s point is that to help end the tragic epidemic of mass shootings that is taking so many American lives, we need to ban weapons of war from our streets,” the campaign told PolitiFact.
Semi-automatic AR-15’s are not weapons of war however, they are the most commonly sold rifle in the USA. When Biden says he wants to outlaw possession of these rifles he’s talking about turning millions of Americans into criminals.
Also, why the heck is Biden wearing sunglasses inside?
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— Conservative Collections (@ConserveCollect) June 30, 2020
