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President Biden has revived a pro-gun control talking point in the wake of the Uvalde mass school shooting that has been repeatedly debunked throughout the years.
Biden told reporters on Memorial Day that the Second Amendment didn’t allow for the ownership of cannons when it was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791.
BIDEN REPEATS DEBUNKED SECOND AMENDMENT CANNON CLAIM, SAYS ‘NO AMENDMENT IS ABSOLUTE’
“The Second Amendment was never absolute,” he said Monday, according to a White House transcript. “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 4, 2022.
(Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Biden has repeated the claim at least five times during his presidency, despite it earning him “Four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post in 2021 and a “False” label from Politifact on three separate occasions dating back to May 2020.
Biden made the claim again just last week after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
“The Second Amendment is not absolute,” he said during a signing of his police reform executive order. “When it was passed, you couldn’t own a — you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. It’s just — there’s always been limitations.”
US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden attend Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde, Texas on May 29, 2022.
(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
“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,” he said in June 2021, White House transcripts show. “You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
The Second Amendment as it is written does not limit who can “keep and bear arms” or what kind of arms people can keep and bear.
Federal gun regulation didn’t come until 1934, decades after the Second Amendment was introduced, according to Politifact.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School to pay their respects to the victims of the mass shooting, Sunday, May 29, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The Constitution does, however, give Congress the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” which were government licenses that allowed civilians to attack and detain vessels of countries at war with the U.S., The Washington Post pointed out in 2021.
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“Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle,” The Post reported at the time.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
