On Monday White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said President Biden’s Thanksgiving Day criticism of semiautomatic firearms was actually meant to be directed toward “assault weapons.”
Real Clear Politics noted that their reporter, Philip Wegmann, asked Jean-Pierre about Biden’s comment:
The president has said repeatedly that he wants to ban assault weapons, but on Thanksgiving when he was in Nantucket, he said: “The idea that we still allow the purchase of semi-automatic weapons in this country today is sick.”
Obviously, that is a huge category of guns from rifles to pistols to shotguns that are not assault weapons.
Did the president misspeak, or does he in fact want to ban all semi-automatic guns?
Jean-Pierre responded, “No. He was talking about assault weapons. That’s what he was talking about on that morning or afternoon when he was asked that question.”
Breitbart News reported that Biden was talking to reporters on the morning of Thanksgiving Day when he criticized the fact that semiautomatic firearms are sold in gun stores and other retail outlets in America.
Biden said, “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It has no social redeeming value.”
On Monday, Jean-Pierre said he was not referencing semiautomatic firearms, but “assault weapons.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.