Last Updated on June 23, 2021
During a rambling speech expressing his distaste for Americans’ Second Amendment right, Democrat President Joe Biden falsely repeated a favorite lie of his that was debunked by Politifact in 2020, claiming that “you couldn’t buy cannon” at the time when the Second Amendment was passed. Biden went on to muse about using F-15 military aircraft and nuclear weapons in a hypothetical war against “patriots.”
“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,” Biden falsely claimed on Wednesday. “You couldn’t buy cannon.” The claim that Americans could not cannon at the time the Second Amendment was drafted is a lie that Biden has repeated multiple times the past, so much so that mainstream fact-checking outlet Politifact rated the claim “false” in June 2020.
NEW – Biden: "If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons."pic.twitter.com/PvQtbxbOjY
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) June 23, 2021
“It seems highly unlikely that there were restrictions on the private ownership” of cannons” a historian told Politifact, which went on to conclude, “The campaign was unable to come up with an example of a law banning private ownership of cannons, and historians of the period doubt that any existed. To the contrary, there are documented instances of privateers, or privately owned vessels, setting sail with cannons during the period.”
In Wednesday’s speech, Biden went on to repeatedly bungle a quote a quote by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Biden said, “Those who say the blood of liberty – the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government.”
“While the tree of liberty is not watered by the blood of patriots, what’s happens is [sic], that their never been, if you wanted to think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” Biden said, going on to repeat his lie that the Second Amendment limited the type of firearms that could be purchased by the American people.
