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‘I’m Coming for You’: Biden Threatens Gun Makers at South Carolina Rally

Joe Biden speaks at a rally with striking Stop & Shop workers in Boston, Mass., April 18, 2019. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Joe Biden warned gun manufacturers during a speech in South Carolina on Monday night that “I’m coming for you, and I’m taking you down.”

Biden has cast himself as a relative moderate in recent months on gun-control. His campaign’s gun control plan, which was released in October, proposed reinstating an “assault-weapons ban” and universal background checks, but would not force the current owners of semiautomatic rifles to sell the guns to government, as a number of his opponents proposed.

While he’s avoided aggressively targeting gun owners, Biden has previously emphasized his commitment to holding gun manufacturers liable when one of their products is used in the commission of a crime.

“A guy has 12 assault weapons with bump stocks, which means you can fire it faster. You can pull the trigger faster,” Biden said last week during a CNN town hall, referencing the Las Vegas hotel shooting. “Why in God’s name should anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone be able to own that? It’s just wrong, and we’ve got to — and I promise you, as president, I am going to get these guys.”

As Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) has risen in the polls, Biden has taken to criticizing the Vermont lawmaker’s early career record on gun control, pointing out that Sanders, who was endorsed by the NRA in his 1990 congressional race, voted against gun control legislation on a number of occasions as a young House member.

“It’s just flat-out immoral, it’s just flat-out immoral,” Biden said Thursday at a meeting with members of the anti-gun group Moms Demand Action in Nevada. “You know, committed Republicans and some Democrats — like Bernie Sanders — voted five times, five times against background checks and waiting periods; notwithstanding the fact that millions of people were denied having access to weapons of destruction because they didn’t qualify.”

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