Biden administration applauds Illinois assault weapon ban

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

President Joe Biden ran in part on his history with gun control. In particular, his efforts to get the Assault Weapon Ban of 1996 passed.

Granted, we know that the measure didn’t really do much of anything. Violent crime was already on the decline when the law passed, but he pushed it through and he’s proud of it.

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Now he’s celebrating a similar law passing in Illinois.

Illinois has become the ninth state in the United States to ban the sale of assault weapons, a move hailed by the administration of President Joe Biden, who called on other states to pass similar bans.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden “commends the leadership” of Illinois’s governor and legislators. The ban was passed by the state Senate on Monday, with Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signing the bill into law the next day.

Jean-Pierre said that Biden has “continued to press for more action to keep our homes, schools and communities safe, including federal laws requiring background checks for all gun sales and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines”.

“In the meantime, the president continues to urge other states to join California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, Washington, DC and now Illinois to ban assault weapons at the state level to save lives.”

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Shorter Biden: “Please keep ignoring Bruen, k?”

After all, that’s essentially what the president is actually doing here. The Bruen decision, coupled with the Heller, should have put an end to any talk of an assault weapon ban, yet Illinois passed it and Biden is applauding it.

However, what good does passing legislation covering only a tiny fraction of firearms used in crimes actually do about the overall homicide rate?

This won’t even make a difference in mass shootings. For example, the Parkland killer only had 10-round magazines and it clearly didn’t prevent that bit of carnage. We also know that most mass shooters use handguns, not AR-15s, though the rifles are what get all the headlines.

Biden should know this. He’s got access to all the data in the world.

Of course, that’s assuming anyone is interested in telling him that one of the key policies he ran on, one of the signature pieces of legislation during his tenure in the Senate, is a complete and absolute failure and that he’s willing to listen if they did.

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Neither of those strike me as particularly likely.

Instead, Biden will celebrate another infringement on our freedom, then act shocked when the Supreme Court finally strikes down such infringements. Not that I expect Biden to actually be cognizant of whatever the Court decides. He’ll be too busy thinking the Salvation Army is the Marine Corps or something.

Unfortunately for everyone in Illinois, though, this is the law they’ll be forced to deal with until the courts do get involved in law the permanent smackdown on this nonsense once and for all.

And they will. That’s a foregone conclusion. It just seems the Biden administration didn’t read that memo.

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