Hey Joe Biden! You just tanked in the Iowa caucuses and your approval in New Hampshire is in free fall, with a couple of polls out this weekend showing you in fifth place. What are you going to do to right the ship? Oh, you’re going to talk about the Second Amendment? Yeah, that should work.

Biden: “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.” pic.twitter.com/npmW40DHS2

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 9, 2020

Yeah, that should go over well in the Live Free or Die state.

The former vice president took a page from Eric “Duke Nukem” Swalwell’s campaign by threatening to use military force against American gun owners who would resist his gun control agenda at a campaign stop in New Hampshire over the weekend. It’s unclear from Biden’s rant what exactly would trigger him to call out a Hellfire missile strike on gun owners who object to his gun control plans, but it’s an idiotic argument to begin with.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that things got super squirrelly here in the United States and we did end up in the awful situation of armed resistance to government tyranny. The United States is a lot bigger than, say Vietnam or Afghanistan, two places that have shown that the doctrine of asymmetric warfare is alive and well as a military strategy, even in a day and age of Hellfire missiles and armed drones. Tactically speaking, I don’t think Biden is correct.

Beyond the tactical misfire, however, Biden is making a huge mistake by nonchalantly threatening to bomb American towns and cities because he’s bothered by a quote from Thomas Jefferson. I would argue that by invoking the threat of military force against Americans who don’t comply with his gun control laws, Biden’s just himself a hole that he’s going to have a hard time climbing out of.

I believe that Americans are concerned about the deep divides in this nation, but Biden’s comments only serve to exacerbate them. Biden’s been talking up bipartisanship on the campaign trail, but that message of reaching out across the aisle is completely negated when he starts talking about firing Hellfire missiles at recalcitrant gun owners in Montana or the wilds of western Virginia. It didn’t work out well for Swalwell’s campaign, and it’s not going to help Biden in his bid to become president.

There are 100,000,000 American gun owners and 400,000,000 privately owned arms in this country. Biden’s not going to be able to strike us all down with Hellfire missiles, no matter how much he might want to. It’s a silly talking point, and one that dances right around the fact that we’re already seeing resistance to gun laws in places like New York, New Jersey, and California, where compliance rates for new bans on firearms and magazines are in the single digits. That’s the reality that Biden and other anti-gun politicians have to deal with, and threatening airstrikes isn’t a realistic strategy. In fact, it’s a call to tyranny.