Gun policy in America will face “big, bold changes” if Joe Biden is inaugurated in January, according to one of the presumptive president-elect’s top aides last week.
Stef Feldman, the national policy director for Biden’s presidential campaign, said the former-Vice President will use executive action to combat gun violence if Democrats do not gain control of the Senate, the Washington Examiner reported.
During a Zoom briefing hosted by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service on December 3, Feldman said Biden plans to “make big, bold changes through executive action, not just on policing and climate like we talked about previously, but in healthcare and education on gun violence, on a range of issues.”
Feldman said Biden will implement changes on guns quickly, even prioritizing the issue on his list of initial executive orders.
“There’s really a lot you can do through guidance and executive action,” she said.
Last year, Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he supports a federal gun buyback program as a way of getting weapons off the streets. Biden also said he supports universal background checks, adding that ‘assault weapons’ “should be illegal. Period.”
When asked about gun owners’ concerns that he would take away people’s firearms, Biden said, “Bingo! You’re right if you have an assault weapon.”
“Right now, there’s no legal way that I’m aware of where you could deny the right if they had legally purchased them,” Biden told CNN. “But we can, in fact, make a major effort to get them off the street and out of the possession of people.”
Biden seeks to reclassify the Modern Sporting Rifle to fall under the 1934 National Firearms Act so guns like the AR15 are treated the same as short-barrel rifles and machine guns.
According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the move would force owners to be put on a federal list, submit fingerprints, photos, notify law enforcement officers and wait over nine months for approval, as well as pay a $200 tax.
Biden also wants to reduce stockpiling of weapons, restricting the number of firearms an American can purchase per month to one, the Biden-Harris website stated.
Second Amendment advocates have vocally opposed Biden’s proposed gun control measures. In August, the National Rifle Association warned gun owners, tweeting, “If Joe Biden wins, he will destroy our Second Amendment, and America will become unrecognizable.”
If Joe Biden wins, he will destroy our Second Amendment, and America will become unrecognizable.
— NRA (@NRA) August 29, 2020
