How Can Joe Biden Take Away Our Guns If Gun Haver Hunter Still At Large?
Unlike Donald Trump, Hunter Biden has competent lawyers.
The press is obsessed with anchoring Joe Biden’s presidency with his son Hunter’s (many) problems. The Irish Times had this headline last month: “Joe Biden’s son Hunter and rival Donald Trump may both be before criminal courts in run-up to presidential election.” Fox News noted Wednesday that both Hunter Biden and Donald Trump appeared in a court on the same day! Of course, only one of those two men is running for president.
Hunter Biden did in fact plead not guilty Tuesday to gun charges in a Delaware court. He’s accused of lying about his drug use while buying a handgun, which the Associated Press reminds us is the “first-ever criminal prosecution of a sitting US president’s child.” Keep that fact in the back of your head for the next bar trivia night, but it’s probably more relevant that there’s multiple criminal prosecutions underway for the previous president, who’s currently running for the same office again.
Hunter Biden’s legal defense is apparently yet another problem for his father’s administration because it reportedly challenges the very constitutionality of the charges. But, wait, doesn’t Joe Biden want to ban all your guns? (No, he does not.)
The 1968 federal Gun Control Act banned drug users from buying and possessing firearms. However, a federals appeal court officially struck down the law in August. The Fifth Circuit Court judges wrote, “[O]ur history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage.”
Gun-totin’ junkies can thank the current MAGA Supreme Court, which ruled in 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that US gun restrictions are only valid if they’re similar to gun laws that existed back during the “Founding era,” a morally upright period when white people enslaved other human beings.
Since the Bruen ruling, multiple defendants have specifically challenged the drug-users prohibition, arguing that Founding-era laws — back when women were male property — only prevented people white men from packing heat while actively drunk off their asses. The laws said nothing about past intoxication.
And as Hunter Biden heads to trial next year, he will become the most famous defendant by far to lean on the Second Amendment, even as his father is expected to make gun safety a focus of his reelection campaign.
Hunter Biden is only “famous” because the media won’t shut up about this loser. The Politico article’s writers further insist that Hunter Biden’s case will “create political discomfort for both pro-gun groups and advocates for tighter gun rules.” They do bother explaining why, but their reasoning is nonsensical.
See, Joe Biden is an active proponent for sensible gun safety laws. He signed the first major gun legislation in decades. He’s expanded background checks. Last month, he launched the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention, which Vice President Kamala Harris will oversee. President Biden also said he was “deeply disappointed” in the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision.
However, despite Republicans’ most fervent hopes, President Biden is not Hunter Biden. Hunter is under no obligation to pass up a legal defense that could keep him out of prison, especially since there’s every reason to believe he was only indicted on these specific charges because he’s the president’s son.
I support high bars to gun ownership, so I don’t like the Bruen decision. However, I also don’t think Hunter Biden should face summary execution just to appease MAGA dullards who are still pissed that Trump lost.
[Politico]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.
Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.
Catch SER on his podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
Hunter Biden absolutely cannot be allowed to become president in 2024.
And yet, if Hunter Biden was running for President against Trump, I and every sane person would still pick Hunter Biden.
I don't want to go down the usual right wing rabbit hole of accepting the idea that Hunter is some piece of shit--yes, he had drug problems, and should not have owned a gun while having those drug problems, and he may have done something screwy regarding his taxes. He'll get his day in court. Yet a lot of this coverage is overblown, as though he's some corrupt monster rather than a troubled man who skirted through much of life due to having an influential dad. Much like yes, Hillary did handle her emails in a fucked up way, but she wasn't some murderous criminal who laughed as Americans got murdered in Libya. The only thing the Right Wing Noise Machine and the MSM morons deserve here is a hearty "fuck you, we don't care".