By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is preparing to sue the Biden administration in the aftermath of the president’s announcement this week of his new executive order on gun control.
In a brief news release, Knudsen told TGM and other media, “The President can’t rewrite laws. This is yet another executive order from the most anti-gun administration in history designed to circumvent the legislative process. I am reviewing the executive order and will closely monitor the federal government’s implementation of it. If it violates Americans’ rights, I will file a lawsuit.”
Experience dictates Knudsen can be taken at his word on this issue. He led a group of Republican attorneys general in warning credit card companies against establishing a new merchants’ code to identify firearm and ammunition purchases. Last year, he joined 24 other attorneys general in filing an important amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the plaintiffs in the challenge of Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban. Plaintiffs in that case include the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The case is known as Bianchi v. Frosh.
According to Fox News, Knudsen’s office “is waiting for the Biden Administration to act on its order.”
“They don’t dare say it out loud,” Knudsen told the network, “but what they’re talking about is going after private firearm transactions and trying to require Americans to do a background check on every private firearms transfer. Well, as nice sounding as that might be, what do we know about criminals? They don’t follow the law, and they don’t get their firearms from retailers. They steal guns.”
Fox News noted that between 2017 and 2021, “privately made firearms submitted to ATF increased by 1,083 percent, with 37,980 firearms traced, according to the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment.”
Not surprisingly, Biden portrayed his new effort as having to do with protecting children, a favorite argument put forth by anti-gunners for decades. Their gun control agenda has always included so-called “universal background checks” and Biden’s personal top priority, banning so-called “assault weapons.”
“We will no longer allow the interests of the gun manufacturers to win out over the safety of our children and Nation,” Biden said earlier this week during a press event in Monterey Park, Calif., where he traveled to sign the executive order.
The order, according to the White House fact sheet, included the following provisions:
- Increase the number of background checks by ensuring that all background checks required by law are conducted before firearm purchases, moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.
- Improve public awareness and increase appropriate use of extreme risk protection (“red flag”) orders and safe storage of firearms.
- Address the loss or theft of firearms during shipping.
- Provide the public and policymakers with more information regarding federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law.
- Use the Department of Defense’s acquisition of firearms to further firearm and public safety practices.
Other highlights of the president’s plan were detailed by the administration:
- Help catch shooters by accelerating federal law enforcement’s reporting of ballistics data.
- Accelerate and intensify implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA).
- Improve federal support for gun violence survivors, victims and survivors’ families, first responders to gun violence, and communities affected by gun violence.
- Advance congressional efforts to prevent the proliferation of firearms undetectable by metal detectors.
But Knudsen is wary.
“When I give my 14-year-old son a shotgun for his birthday,” he said, “do I have to go through a background check, and does he have to go through a background check? The answer to that is no. I’m his father, and I’m able to give him a gift. That happens all over in this country.”
The Big Sky Country attorney general may not have to sue. With Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats having a thin majority in the Senate, there may not be much support for more gun control, considering that Congress last year passed a Biden-backed gun control bill, which he promptly signed about the same time the Supreme Court was handing down the landmark Bruen ruling.
