The slow-motion trainwreck that was Joe Biden's 2024 campaign has officially come to an end, with Biden announcing that he's stepping down as the Democratic nominee. Biden announced the news on social media Sunday afternoon, saying that he believes it's in the best interests of "his party and the country to stand down" as the Democratic nominee and "focus solely" on his duties as president for the remainder of his term. 

Biden highlighted several of what he considers to be his most significant achievements, including passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he called the "first gun safety law in 30 years" to have been signed into law. 

pic.twitter.com/RMIRvlSOYw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

Notably, Biden did not offer an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in his statement, which will only fuel the swirling Democrats have been having behind closed doors for the past several weeks;  whether to elevate Harris as the nominee (which would be the logical choice were it not for her own unpopularity) or allow for an open convention when the DNC takes place beginning on August 19th. 

***UPDATE**** 

While Biden didn't endorse Harris in his first statement, he did endorse her as the nominee in a followup post on X. 

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

Original story follows:

Unfortunately for gun owners, the odds of the Democrats selecting a candidate who hasn't demonstrated their hostility towards the Second Amendment is virtually nil. Harris has a long track record of promoting and defending gun control laws dating back to her days as a city attorney in San Francisco, and defended multiple gun control statutes during her time as California's Attorney General. 

More recently, Harris has nominally been in charge of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, though former Everytown lobbyist Rob Wilcox is widely seen as the person who's really pulling the strings in the office. According to retired ATF deputy assistant director Peter Forcelli, the office has been pushing the ATF to announce a new rule treating Glocks (and perhaps other semi-automatic handguns) as machineguns; a move that, so far anyway, ATF Director Steve Dettelbach has been reluctant to take. 

Harris probably has the inside track on the nomination at this point, but it's far from a foregone conclusion that she'll be atop the ticket when Democrats wrap up their convention in Chicago about four weeks from now. It's a given, however, that whoever the candidate is, they'll be just as awful on the Second Amendment as Harris.

Some of the other names we've heard bandied about are U.S. Senator and Giffords co-founder Mark Kelly, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro; all of whom have extensive histories of supporting and promoting bans on commonly owned firearms and magazines, restrictions on the right to carry, and wrapping both gun owners and gun sellers in so much red tape that exercising our Second Amendment rights would become a near impossibility. 

Of all the Democrats whose name has been mentioned as a potential replacement, the least hostile to the right to keep and bear arms is probably Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. Given the Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the Kentucky legislature, Beshear hasn't had a lot of opportunity to mess with the state's gun laws, but he did allow Constitutional Carry to take effect without forcing a veto override. Of course, he didn't actually sign the bill either, which allows him to declare his opposition to permitless carry if he were to become the nominee. 

Kelly, Whitmer, Newsom, Pritzker, and Shapiro, on the other hand, have long supported efforts aimed at cracking down on legal gun ownership. 

Pritzer's Protect Illinois Communities Act, which bans so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines, is the subject of federal lawsuits. 

Shapiro, who served as Pennsylvania's Attorney General before winning the governorship in November, 2022, has long called for more gun control laws in the Keystone State, and endorsed "may issue" concealed carry by signing on to an amicus brief authored by California AG Rob Bonta's office in the Bruen litigation.  

Whitmer has signed several gun control bills during her time as governor, including a "red flag" law, and has been supportive of a ban on so-called assault weapons as well, declaring that prohibiting the sale (and perhaps possession as well) of the most popular rifles in the country is the "right thing to do." 

Newsom, of course, has never met a gun control bill that didn't meet with his favor, and has been floating the idea of a constitutional amendment to enshrine "universal" background checks, waiting periods, and gun bans in our foundational framework of government. So far he hasn't found any support for his plan outside of the California legislature, but that could change if he becomes the Democrats' standard-bearer this fall. 

I tend to doubt that Newsom will get the nod, if for no other reason than the Democrats' fealty to identity politics. Skipping over the sitting vice-president in order to select a rich, white guy from the same state doesn't seem likely to me... though if you had asked me three months ago about the prospect of Joe Biden dropping out of the race altogether, I would have given that slim odds as well. The Democrat Party is in chaos today, and I honestly have no clue what will happen next. If there's one thing that Second Amendment supporters can count on, however, it's that whoever emerges as the Democrats' nominee will have a long track record of attacking our right to keep and bear arms.