Bloomberg Gun Group Wants Biden To Target "Ghost Guns"

Michael Bloomberg poured tens of millions of dollars from his personal fortune into efforts to place Joe Biden in the White House, and now he’s looking to make good on his investment. On Thursday, Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety demanded that Biden use executive actions to impose a number of new restrictions on gun owners in the first 100 days of what’s likely to be a Joe Biden term beginning next month.

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If you’re not afraid of getting anti-gun cooties on you, the Everytown for Gun Safety memo is here for your persual, but here are some low-lights of their suggestions for Biden

The Biden-Harris administration can:

1) shut down the no-questions-asked marketplace for ghost gun parts and kits by directing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to ensure the background check system covers all firearms, including the core parts and kits used to build untraceable ghost guns;

2) address the Charleston loophole, which enables illegal sales to go forward before a check is complete, by requiring all gun dealers to notify the Department of Justice (DOJ) before such a sale, prioritizing completing those background checks, and ensuring no background checks are deleted before completion;

3) take action to stop people who shouldn’t have guns and may be looking to get armed by requiring the FBI to alert state and local law enforcement of all denied background checks in their jurisdiction;

4) ensure the background check system has all of the prohibiting records it needs by having DOJ interpret the law to cover all prohibited purchasers and encouraging states and federal agencies to submit relevant records; and

5)target gaps in the law for proactive enforcement by having DOJ clarify which sellers need to get a dealer license because they are “engaged in the business” and crack down on the online sales market.

Gun control activists have been going after unfinished frames and receivers for a couple of years now, and Biden’s pick for Health and Human Services, California AG Xavier Becerra, actually joined forces with gun control groups in a lawsuit against the ATF several months ago seeking to compel the agency to redefine unfinished frames and receivers as actual firearms. Now the gun control groups are seeking that same remedy, only through executive action on the part of Biden.

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Everytown’s not just interested in background checks, however. The anti-gun group also wants Biden to establish new “Consumer Product Safety Commission standards for gun storage devices and lay the groundwork for smart guns and microstamping by funding and testing prototypes at the National Institute for Justice” as well as use the Federal Trade Commission to start evaluating gun ads for false and misleading claims.

Biden himself claimed on Thursday that his ability to push sweeping gun control changes via executive orders is limited, and complained in a private meeting with civil rights leaders that some on the Left were pushing for orders that are unconstitutional.

Biden cited gun control as an example, saying that if he signed an executive order banning assault weapons, a future Republican president could undo that ban and use it as a precedent to drastically expand gun rights.

“We do that, next guy comes along and says, ‘Well, guess what? By executive order, I guess everybody can have machine guns again,’ ” he said. “So we gotta be careful.”

Actually, if Biden signed an executive order banning so-called assault weapons that would immediately challenged in court, where I believe it would face steep odds of remaining in place. Still, expectations are high on the side of anti-gun activists that Biden will target law-abiding gun owners and the firearms industry with executive actions of some kind, and as we’ve previously discussed, Biden could impose a ban on the importation of “non-sporting rifles” and ammunition via executive order without trying to ban all center-fire semi-automatic rifles.

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Biden may be trying to tamp down expectations from the Left that he’ll be able to enact his gun ban plans via executive action, but clearly anti-gun groups are offering him a road map to restrict the Second Amendment without getting Congress involved. Gun owners need to stay vigilant, informed, and engaged in the months ahead, because we’ve got plenty of fights ahead of us in the next few months.

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