Someone Should Tell Joe Biden: More Crime Is Committed With Shot Guns Than "Assault Weapons"

Vice President Joe Biden has been offering some free gun advice lately, but it’s not very good advice:

“I said, ‘Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out and put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,’” Biden said.

“You don’t need an AR-15—it’s harder to aim,” he added, “it’s harder to use, and in fact you don’t need 30 rounds to protect yourself. Buy a shotgun! Buy a shotgun!”

Of course, shooting warning shots in the air (especially with a double-barrel shotgun) not only disarms you at a time when you should be ready to defend yourself, but it puts projectiles in the air which will eventually come down somewhere. Maybe on some unwitting bystander a couple of blocks away.

What’s more, firing a warning shots is illegal in Delaware in that it could be considered menacing. Keep in mind, you’re not allowed to use deadly force while defending property, so shooting off your gun when there’s no immediate threat to your person isn’t a good idea tactically or legally.

And, hilariously, even as Biden extols the virtues of shotguns over “assault weapons” like the AR15, Jacob Sullum points out that shotguns are actually used in far more crimes than “assault weapons.”

Contrary to the impression left by such favoritism, there is nothing inherently virtuous about shotguns, such that they can be used only for legitimate purposes and never to hurt or kill innocent people. On the same day that Biden lauded shotguns as the ideal weapons for home defense, a young man used one to murder three people in the Los Angeles area. In fact, shotguns are used in crimes considerably more often than the “assault weapons” that Biden and Feinstein say pose an intolerable threat to public safety. A 2004 study sponsored by the National Institute of Justice estimated that “assault weapons” (mostly pistols) were used in something like 2 percent of gun crimes before they were banned by a federal law that expired that year. By comparison, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, shotguns were used in 5 percent of gun crimes in 1993, the year before Congress passed the “assault weapon” ban.

But remember, Joe Biden was the guy President Obama assigned to be the sherpa for his gun control agenda. He probably couldn’t have found someone more clueless if he’d tried.