Fact check: Biden says Second Amendment limits gun rights
President Biden said "The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own." PolitiFact checks his claim.
Posted — UpdatedPresident Joe Biden’s plan to curb rising violence relies on several steps: more aid to local police departments, expanding job programs for young adults, more violence intervention programs, and tougher measures to shut down gun sellers who break federal laws.
"Rogue gun dealers feel like they can get away with selling guns to people who aren’t legally allowed to own them," Biden said June 23. "There has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it."
And, Biden said, that power was rooted in history.
"The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own," Biden said.
He added: "You couldn’t buy a cannon."
We reached out to the White House and received no comment, but Biden’s statement is not accurate history.
During the campaign, Biden made a similar claim about cannons in the Revolutionary War and who could own them. We rated that False.
This time, on top of that, Biden misrepresents what the Second Amendment says.
Second Amendment places no limits, experts say
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds said the amendment’s few words speak for themselves.
"The Second Amendment places no limits on individual ownership of cannon, or any other arms," Reynolds said.
Setting aside ongoing disagreements over that ruling, Fordham University law professor Nicholas Johnson said, "The amendment limited government action, not people."
"The first federal gun control law does not appear until the 20th century," Johnson said.
The debate that framed the Second Amendment
From the way Biden put it, the Second Amendment regulated weapons. The more immediate driver in 1787 was the desire to keep the federal government in check.
"Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population," Vandercoy wrote in 1994.
Restricting weapons to control perceived threats
There were some state and local laws after the Second Amendment was adopted in 1792 that limited firearms.
The most sweeping ones barred Black people, free or enslaved, from owning them.
Historian Saul Cornell at Fordham found other laws aimed at controlling certain groups. Some banned gun ownership by people who backed the British. Others targeted Native Americans.
"The (National Rifle Association) will call out Biden, correctly, that there were no modern style gun control laws in the Founding era because there was little interpersonal gun violence among persons of European origin," Cornell said. "Gun control groups will correctly say that a variety of robust regulations existed at the time of the Second Amendment and that the Founders feared anarchy as much as tyranny."
Cornell argues that for about the first 50 years after passage of the Second Amendment, gun technology was limited. The issues of crime and safety that drive the modern debate, he said, didn’t begin to emerge until manufacturers began producing reliable, affordable guns in greater volume.
PolitiFact ruling
Biden said that from the start, the Second Amendment "limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own."
The Second Amendment limited government power, not the rights of individuals. Laws at the time that limited firearm ownership were primarily racist, aimed at controlling Black people and Native Americans.
Broadly, gun regulation came decades after passage of the Second Amendment when gun technology changed. The first national gun regulation law did not rely on the Second Amendment.
We rate Biden’s claim False.
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