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Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help. More Info ### I would like to contribute One Time Monthly Yearly Join Now ![](\\" ![](\\" Joe Biden stated on June 23, 2021 in a White House announcement: \"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.” ![\\"true\\"](\\" false/33efdb6633e5e2fdc2d4e2f63383a1e0.jpg.\\") ![\\"false\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") * National * History * Guns * Joe Biden ![\\"President](\\" President Joe Biden discusses his gun crime prevention strategy as Attorney General Merrick Garland listens. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) ![\\"Jon](\\" By Jon Greenberg June 25, 2021 # Joe Biden gets history wrong on the Second Amendment limiting gun ownership #### If Your Time is short * The Second Amendment limited governmental power, not the right of individuals to own a weapon. * Laws at the time that limited firearm ownership were primarily racist, aimed at controlling Black people and Native Americans. * The first national gun regulation law in 1934 did not rely on the Second Amendment. See the sources for this fact-check President Joe Biden’s plan to curb rising violence relies on several steps: more aid to local police departments, expanding job programs for young adults, more violence intervention programs, and tougher measures to shut down gun sellers who break federal laws. \"Rogue gun dealers feel like they can get away with selling guns to people who aren’t legally allowed to own them,\" Biden said June 23. \"There has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.\" And, Biden said, that power was rooted in history. \"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 said. \"You couldn’t buy a cannon.\" We reached out to the White House and received no comment, but Biden’s statement is not accurate history. During the campaign, Biden made a similar claim about cannons in the Revolutionary War and who could own them. We rated that False. This time, on top of that, Biden misrepresents what the Second Amendment says. Second Amendment places no limits, experts say The text of the Second Amendment is short: \"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.\" University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds said the amendment’s few words speak for themselves. \"The Second Amendment places no limits on individual ownership of cannon, or any other arms,\" Reynolds said. There have been many court cases to resolve whether the amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it does. Setting aside ongoing disagreements over that ruling, Fordham University law professor Nicholas Johnson said, \"The amendment limited government action, not people.\" \"The first federal gun control law does not appear until the 20th century,\" Johnson said. That law, the National Firearms Act, came in 1934 when machine guns were the weapon of choice of Prohibition Era gangsters. (The law was drafted before Prohibition ended in 1933.) When U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings made the case for the law before the House Ways and Means Committee, he based it on the government’s power to tax and regulate interstate commerce, not the Second Amendment. #### Featured Fact-check ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on August 23, 2024 in a speech in Las Vegas “Kamala cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.” ![\\"true\\"](\\" false/33efdb6633e5e2fdc2d4e2f63383a1e0.jpg.\\") ![\\"false\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") By Amy Sherman • August 28, 2024 \"If we made a statute absolutely forbidding any human being to have a machine gun, you might say there is some constitutional question involved,\" Cummings said April 16, 1934. \"But when you say ‘We will tax the machine gun’ and when you say that ‘the absence of a license showing payment of the tax has been made indicates that a crime has been perpetrated,’ you are easily within the law.\" The debate that framed the Second Amendment From the way Biden put it, the Second Amendment regulated weapons. The more immediate driver in 1787 was the desire to keep the federal government in check. The framers of the Constitution agreed that a federal government might need a standing army. But coming out from under one despot, they wanted to avoid creating another. This was something that Federalists and Anti-Federalists could agree on, wrote Valparaiso law professor David Vandercoy. \"Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population,\" Vandercoy wrote in 1994. Restricting weapons to control perceived threats There were some state and local laws after the Second Amendment was adopted in 1792 that limited firearms. The most sweeping ones barred Black people, free or enslaved, from owning them. A 1792 Virginia law, for example, said, \"No Negro or mulatto whatsoever shall keep or carry any gun, powder, shot, club or other weapon whatsoever.\" Historian Saul Cornell at Fordham found other laws aimed at controlling certain groups. Some banned gun ownership by people who backed the British. Others targeted Native Americans. Cornell also pointed to a 1795 Massachusetts law that mainly targeted rioters but gave local authorities broad latitude to arrest people who carried firearms. \"The (National Rifle Association) will call out Biden, correctly, that there were no modern style gun control laws in the Founding era because there was little interpersonal gun violence among persons of European origin,\" Cornell said. \"Gun control groups will correctly say that a variety of robust regulations existed at the time of the Second Amendment and that the Founders feared anarchy as much as tyranny.\" Cornell argues that for about the first 50 years after passage of the Second Amendment, gun technology was limited. The issues of crime and safety that drive the modern debate, he said, didn’t begin to emerge until manufacturers began producing reliable, affordable guns in greater volume. Our ruling Biden said that from the start, the Second Amendment \"limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own.\" The Second Amendment limited government power, not the rights of individuals. Laws at the time that limited firearm ownership were primarily racist, aimed at controlling Black people and Native Americans. Broadly, gun regulation came decades after passage of the Second Amendment when gun technology changed. The first national gun regulation law did not rely on the Second Amendment. We rate Biden’s claim False. #### Read About Our Process The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter ### Our Sources White House, Remarks by President Biden and Attorney General Garland on Gun Crime Prevention Strategy, June 23, 2021 National Archives, The Bill of Rights: A Transcription, accessed June 24, 2021 Oyez, D.C. vs. Heller, June 26, 2008 U.S. Government Printing Office, National Firearms Act - House Ways and Means Committee hearings, April-May, 1934 Hastings Law Journal, The Power Side of the Second Amendment Question: Limited, Enumerated Powers and the Continuing Battle over the Legitimacy of the Individual Right to Arms, April 2019 Yale Law School, The Federalist Papers No. 46, Jan. 29, 1788 Valparaiso University Law Review, The history of the second amendment, Spring 1994 Duke Center on Firearms Law, Why Heller Is Such Bad History, Oct. 7, 2020 NPR, Biden Outlines New Steps To Curb Surging Gun Violence, June 23, 2021 PolitiFact, Joe Biden’s dubious claim about Revolutionary War cannon ownership, June 29, 2020 Email exchange, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, professor of law, University of Tennessee School of Law, June 24, 2021 Email exchange, Jack Rakove, professor emeritus of history and political science, Stanford University, June 24. 2021 Email exchange, Nicholas J. Johnson, professor of law, Fordham University School of Law, June 24, 2021 Email exchange, Saul Cornell, professor of history, Fordham University, June 24, 2021 ## Browse the Truth-O-Meter ### More by Jon Greenberg slide 4 to 6 of 15 ![](\\" ![](\\" Hillary Clinton stated on September 6, 2022 in a tweet.: “I had zero emails that were classified.” ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Jon Greenberg • September 13, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tim Scott stated on August 10, 2022 in an interview on Fox News: “The Congressional Budget Office says 90% of the revenue generated from the new IRS agents will come from people making less than $200,000 … and the revenue generated will be $300-plus billion.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Jon Greenberg • August 17, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Bob Good stated on August 10, 2022 in a tweet.: “Democrats are voting to add an army of 87,000 IRS agents who will target middle class taxpayers and conduct at least 1 million more audits each year. ” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Warren Fiske • August 17, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tucker Carlson stated on November 8, 2022 in election night coverage on Fox News: “Electronic voting machines didn\'t allow people to vote” in Maricopa County, Arizona. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Jon Greenberg • November 9, 2022 ![](\\" black/4590875651af69b2c789ceab409664dd.jpg\\") ![](\\" black/72988380e8c8bd188dc360d11552e4a0.jpg\\") X posts stated on November 8, 2022 in a tweet: “There is no chain of custody” for ballots placed in Box No. 3 at Maricopa, Arizona, polling sites. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Jon Greenberg • November 8, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tim Ryan stated on November 1, 2022 in a town hall event: “J.D. 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She\'s called it a great law.” ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" mostly-true.jpg\\") By Jon Greenberg • October 12, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kari Lake stated on October 9, 2022 in an interview on CBS News\' Face the Nation: “Katie Hobbs voted for allowing a baby who survives an abortion — that the hospital would refuse medical care and allow the baby to die on a cold metal tray.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Jon Greenberg • October 12, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tim Ryan stated on September 27, 2022 in a campaign ad: “I voted with Trump on trade.” ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" mostly-true.jpg\\") By Jon Greenberg • October 4, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Mark Finchem stated on September 22, 2022 in a Secretary of State debate: Ballot harvesting “altered the outcome” of a city council election in Yuma County, Arizona. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Jon Greenberg • September 23, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Saving Arizona PAC stated on September 8, 2022 in a campaign ad: “Mark Kelly voted against the Keystone pipeline, which caused higher gas prices.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Jon Greenberg • September 16, 2022 ![](\\" ![](\\" Elizabeth Warren stated on August 28, 2022 in an interview on CNN: \"40% of the folks who have student loans do not have a college diploma, four- year diploma. 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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