Mark Anthony Frassetto may not be a household name, but he's still a fairly important figure in Everytown's hierarchy. Frassetto's currently the Deputy Director of 2A History and Scholarship at Everytown Law, where, according to the gun control group, he's tasked with "developing the historical and scholarly record supporting the constitutionality of gun regulation". Frassetto has also previously served the group as its senior counsel for Second Amendment litigation, so it's fair to say he's intimately familiar with the positions that Everytown has taken. 

Frasetto's approval of the sweeping pardon of Hunter Biden is at odds with Everytown's official stance on Section 922(g)(3), which forbids gun ownership by "unlawful" users of drugs. According to the anti-2A group, that prohibition is perfectly acceptable because those individuals have "dangerous histories" and therefore must be barred from exercising their Second Amendment rights. 

So is Frasetto in favor of Biden's pardon because he believes the statute in question is unconstitutional? Does he not really care about enforcing those "commonsense gun regulations" embraced by Everytown? Or is it just worth wiping away Hunter Biden's convictions in the name of owning the conservatives?   

Look, I can understand the argument that people are rarely charged for lying on a 4473, so it's not fair for Hunter Biden to face charges on it. But when you are a gun control group, or in the leadership of one, it's pretty nuts for your response to this to be a one word answer… https://t.co/YWPf7ohdKq

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) December 3, 2024

Kostas is on pretty strong ground in assuming that Everytown doesn't want to "loosen the rules as to 4473s" or the federal prohibition on possessing a gun as an unlawful drug user, and he's spot on with his assessment that Frassetto's comment comes across as circling the wagons around Joe Biden instead of taking a principled stance. As Moros says, "the silence of Everytown (and Giffords, and Brady, and the rest) sends the same message" that party, not policy, comes first for the gun control lobby.

While I'd love to believe that opposition to Section 922(g)(3) is the reason for their silence on Biden's pardon, there's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that's the case. Again, Everytown for Gun Safety is on the record in support of the federal prohibition on gun ownership for "unlawful" users of drugs, even though the statute means that even those who use cannabis medicinally are forced to choose between exercising their Second Amendment rights and treating their anxiety or alleviating the side effects of chemotherapy with a THC gummy or tincture. 

As far as Everytown's concerned, a cancer patient who uses marijuana is a dangerous individual who should be deprived of their Second Amendment rights, so it should go without saying that the group is opposed to someone addicted to crack cocaine, as Hunter Biden was when he purchased a revolver at retail in 2018, buying or possessing a gun. 

Condemning Biden's paternal pardon should be an easy and obvious step for groups like Everytown and anti-gun activists like Frassetto. Biden's on his way out the door, so there's no point in trying to curry favor with him. Plenty of Democrats have expressed varying degrees of frustration, embarrassment, and disagreement with Biden's decision, so the anti-gun groups wouldn't exactly be taking a bold stand or bucking their buddies in the Democratic Party by speaking out against the pardon either. 

The simplest explanation is that the gun control groups (and staffers like Frassetto) are okay with Biden's double standard on gun control laws: enforce them against folks like you and me, while exempting friends and family from any reprecussions. That fits well with their treatment of the Second Amendment as a privilege, not a right, but it also puts them squarely at odds with the text of the Constitution and our nation's history.