Joe Biden Would Ban All Online Gun and Ammunition Sales as President

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Mar 10, 2020

Joe Biden’s gun policy page on his campaign website states that he would ban all online gun and ammunition sales as President, a draconian policy that has largely gone unnoticed thus far in a Democratic primary that has seen serious candidates calling for the mandatory confiscation of semiautomatic rifles.

The proposition is in the middle of his lengthy gun control policy platform, which features calls to outright ban the sale of new semiautomatic rifles and hold gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed with the use of their products.

The link on his call to ban the online sales of guns and ammo leads to a manifesto from March for our Lives, David Hogg’s gun control group.

Buying a gun online is substantively similar to actually buying a gun in person. Online vendors are required to transfer the firearm to a registered Federal Firearms License holder, who conducts the same federal background check that would be carried out for any other sale for a price. Federal firearms licensees are almost always gun retailers themselves, making the process not too different at all from a fully in-person sale.

Outright banning online gun and ammunition sales would wholly segregate the nation’s law-abiding firearms community for participating in the world of e-commerce. E-commerce giants such as Amazon and Ebay already restrict the sales of guns and ammo on their platforms, a move that actually enables a diverse online community of retailers to take up a stake in the industry.

Simply eliminating online sales overnight would destroy countless profitable small businesses, putting up to tens of thousands of people out of their jobs. It would drive up prices for America’s hunting, sporting and self-defense enthusiasm, forcing them to limit their options for a retail market that massive corporations are already seeking to restrict even further.

Biden said that he was going to charge infamous gun confiscation enthusiast Beto O’Rourke with enforcing his gun control agenda, suggesting the party elder could go even further, bowing in deference to the most extreme anti-Second Amendment voices within his own party.