Washington D.C. – President Biden may have tipped off where his party wants to take gun control on Monday when he suggested that 9mm handguns were “high-caliber weapons” and should be banned.
Fox News reported on the remarks that President Biden made the remarks outside the White House after returning from a visit to the site of the mass shooting last week in Texas.
In recalling a visit to a New York trauma hospital, Biden said doctors showed him X-rays of gunshot wounds.
“So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” Biden added. “Remember, the constitution was never absolute.”
“You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weaponry.”
The president, however, ruled out the possibility of issuing an executive order on guns, saying: “I can’t dictate this stuff.”
“I can do the things I’ve done and any executive action I can take, I’ll continue to take. But I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change a background check. I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why should we allow people to have military-style weapons including pistols with 9-mm bullets and can hold 10 or more rounds,” he said at a fundraising event in 2019.
The 9mm round is the most popular handgun caliber in the United States, accounting for well over half of all handguns produced in 2019, according to Shooting Industry magazine. The data showed that throughout the 2010s, 9mm pistols made up more than 40% of all pistols produced in the United States – or roughly four in every ten pistols.
