President Joe Biden repeated what has been called a “dubious” claim about Second Amendment rights and individuals being banned from owning cannons.
During an event in New York City on Thursday, Biden discussed efforts to cut down on gun violence. He said, “This doesn’t violate anybody’s Second Amendment right. There’s no violation of the Second Amendment right. There’s no amendment that’s absolute.”
“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed. So [there’s] no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons,” he added.
Watch the video below:
“There’s no amendment that’s absolute … You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed. So no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.”
— The Recount (@therecount) February 3, 2022
— President Biden on gun violence prevention efforts and Second Amendment rights pic.twitter.com/l0bOLgAQdW
In recent years, Biden has made similar claims, but historians have labeled them “dubious” at best.
During the presidential campaign, he stated, “You weren’t allowed to own a cannon during the Revolutionary War as an individual.”
However, fact-checking outlet PolitiFact labeled that claim “dubious” as it noted his campaign failed to provide evidence that cannon ownership was, in fact, barred during the Revolutionary War.
Additionally, it added that “historians say they are doubtful that there were laws to bar individual ownership of cannons during the Revolutionary War period.”
“It seems highly unlikely that there were restrictions on the private ownership” of cannons, Julie Anne Sweet, a historian and director of military studies at Baylor University,” told the outlet.
She added, “Any sort of gun regulations would have been at the local level, and therefore incredibly difficult and tedious to chase down. The new states were still writing new constitutions and probably did not take this matter into consideration.”
And in June 2021, The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave Biden “Four Pinocchios” for claiming, “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. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
Kessler wrote, “Biden has moved the cannon metaphor to some 20 years after the Revolutionary War — and it’s still wrong.
Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Post, “I think what he’s saying here is that the Second Amendment was never understood to guarantee everyone the right to own all types of weapons, which I believe is true.”
Still, he noted, “As phrased, it sounds like the Second Amendment itself limited ownership, which is not true.”
Kessler added, “Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.”
