Joe Biden Memorial Day Message, “The Second Amendment is Not Absolute”

The installed occupant of the oval office was asked yesterday, “Sir, do you think there is anything different in how Republicans will approach the gun reform question now, given the circumstances?”  Within the response from Joe Biden {Direct Rumble Link}, he said this:

[Transcript] – “Look, when I first started doing hearings on the issue of what rational gun laws should be, it was during a period when I was a senator and the death rate was going up.  Not that many more people were being shot, but the death rate was up.  And when I think of — I’m not sure, I think it was (inaudible) hospital in New York — whatever the largest trauma hospital is. 

And I sat with a trauma doctor, and I asked him — I said, “What’s the difference?  Why are so many people…” — and not that many more people were being shot.  This is now 20 years ago, or 25 years.  I said, “Why are they dying?”  And they showed me x-rays.  He said, “A .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out, may be able to get it, and save the life.  A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

So the idea of these high-caliber weapons is of — there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.  I mean, I just — and remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute.  You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.  You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.”  (LINK)  WATCH:

Except for that “shall not be infringed” part.