INDIANAPOLIS — President Biden is taking executive action on gun control in the U.S.
The president’s orders tackle a range of topics, like banning “ghost guns,” which can be assembled from kits at home and lack the serial number that allows law enforcement to trace them.
Another part focuses on restricting a certain stabilizer for pistols.
“With pistol stabilizer braces, he’s not banning them, but just saying, let’s treat them as short-barreled rifles which makes people go through the NFA process and pay $200 to register them with the ATF,” says Guy Relford, a second amendment rights attorney in Indianapolis and known as “The Gun Guy” on WIBC.
Relford says there is one piece of President Biden’s action that he’s all for — resources for communities to help with violence prevention.
“That, I think, is what makes the most sense, if any of this makes sense,” he said. “It makes sense to actually head off violence where it begins, and that’s at the community level.”
Although he doesn’t agree with all of Biden’s orders, Relford says what he is doing is likely Constitutional.
“I don’t see anything here that would necessarily not hold up in court under a second amendment challenge,” he said. “Like, if he were to try to ban assault weapons, through an executive order, that would clearly be legislative. That’s something only Congress can do. The president can’t do that. I think he probably got advice from the justice department that said ‘don’t go too far, don’t legislate, and only act within your capacity.'”
However, Relford predicts the next move will, indeed, be in Congress. He believes “that is where they’ll try to ban assault weapons and move forward on universal background checks.”
