As the final days of Democrat control on Capitol Hill wane, Fox News is reporting that chances of passing any significant gun control legislation before the end of December are waning.
President Joe Biden has vowed to push through a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” but Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who helped negotiate this year’s “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” told Fox, “I don’t think that’s on the table.”
Biden is also under heavy criticism from the Second Amendment community for his prisoner swap earlier this week that released Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout—known as the “Merchant of Death”—for jailed female basketball player Brittany Griner. Gun rights activists are accusing Biden of gross hypocrisy for releasing an international arms trafficker while, at the same time, he is pushing to restrict the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens and ban modern semiautomatic rifles.
Speaking to Guns.com, nationally-known Second Amendment advocate Alan Gottlieb observed, “Biden is fine with arming the enemies of freedom while disarming the people who fight for firearms freedom. He should be impeached for violating our constitutional Second Amendment rights.
“From this moment forward,” he said, “the president has surrendered any semblance of credibility on the subject of guns, crime and gun control, so he can pack his sanctimony away and just drop the charade. Joe Biden is willing to sacrifice global public safety for political points.”
“The hypocrisy and contempt that President Biden displays for Second Amendment rights was revealed in a span of less than 24 hours,” stated Mark Oliva, Public Affairs director for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “Any freedom-loving American can disagree with Ms. Griner’s previous sentiments of the United States and still applaud that a U.S. citizen has been freed from Russian captivity. The release of such a notorious individual known as the ‘Merchant of Death’ exposes this administration’s double standards especially when this announcement follows abandoning millions of arms – actual weapons of war – to the Taliban, who are sworn enemies of the United States. It is utterly baffling and incomprehensible the energies President Biden exerts to trample on Constitutional rights while ignoring the decisions that allow arms to flow to those intent on destroying the American way of life.”
Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a perennial gun control advocate, acknowledged to Fox there “probably (are) not 60 votes” necessary to pass a gun control bill.
The report also said New York Sen. Charles Schumer is “facing pressure from the White House” on gun control. Schumer authored the original “assault weapons” ban.
“I believe in it strongly,” he said last week, according to Fox. “And we’re continuing to work to see the best way we can try to get this done.”
