During Thursday night’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden demanded passage of gun controls that have been in place for California for over 30 years and have failed to stop some of the highest profile shootings our nation has seen.
Biden claimed his signing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was a defeat for the NRA, and he called on Congress to defeat them again by passing more gun control now.
He said, “I’m demanding a ban on ‘assault weapons’ and ‘high-capacity’ magazines.” He also demanded universal background checks and claimed, “None of this violates the Second Amendment or vilifies responsible gun owners.”
Biden did not say how he can ban legally owned AR-15s, AK-47s, and similar rifles without vilifying the law-abiding Americans who own them.
CalMatters noted that California adopted an “assault weapons” ban in 1989 and universal background checks in 1991. And California has so many additional gun controls that Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety ranked it the number-one state for gun control.
Ironically, the often lauded gun controls did not prevent high-profile shootings, and the FBI pointed out that California was the number-one state for “active shooter incidents” in 2021.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
