During remarks at the National Action Network Martin Luther King, Jr Day Breakfast on Monday, President Joe Biden mocked right-wing Americans and the Second Amendment, saying they need “some F-15s” to take on the federal government.
“Ban the number of bullets that go in a magazine. There’s no, no need for any of that. I love my right-wing friends who talk about ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots,’” Biden said. “If you need to worry about taking on the federal government, you need some F-15s. You don’t need any AR-15. I’m serious. Think about it.”
What Biden’s “right-wing friends” are referring to when speaking of the “tree of liberty” is a quote by Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States.
“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them,” Thomas Jefferson said in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, John Adams’ son-in-law, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
“What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Jefferson was one of 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, pledging to each other their “Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” for the cause of liberty.
This isn’t the first time President Biden has threatened pro-Second Amendment Americans with F-15s. In August last year, Biden again mocked “right-wing Americans” who support the right to keep and bear arms.
“And for those brave right-wing Americans who say [the Second Amendment] is all about keeping America independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something more than a gun,” Biden said at the time.
