With 2024 fast approaching, President Joe Biden is ramping up efforts to impose new gun restrictions without Congressional approval.
On Thursday, The Reload published a leaked draft of a new rule that would curtail American gun exports. That is just the latest in an increasingly long line of unilateral moves by the Biden Administration to enact gun control before the election despite the lack of new legislation. It represents a bet by President Biden that voters will reward his attempts to restrict guns.
Biden’s overall approval rating is sitting at an all-time low as he rounds the corner into the election year. He currently trails all three of the leading Republican candidates for president. He’s nearly five points behind Nikki Haley in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. The same average has him trailing Donald Trump by 2.3 points in a potential rematch despite defeating the former president just three years ago.
His performance on gun policy appears to be one factor weighing down his re-election bid. While Americans started off split on his handling of firearms, things quickly deteriorated from there. In July 2022, YouGov found his numbers had sunk. By May 2023, approval of Biden’s handling of gun policy fell to an all-time low of 31 percent in an Associated Press poll.
Those numbers seem unlikely to improve anytime soon.
Through his first term, Biden has pursued federal rulemaking to impose gun restrictions on four different occasions. He’s also defended Trump’s rule banning bump stocks all the way up to the Supreme Court. But, as the SCOTUS case probably implies, these attempts have been marred by legal troubles.
Biden’s rule that seeks to force more Americans who sell used guns to obtain a federal license is still in the public comment phase. But the gun-related rules that have made it through to official adoption up to this point have been found unconstitutional in federal court. In November, a judge blocked enforcement of Biden’s pistol-brace ban across the country. In October, a Fifth Circuit panel enjoined his “ghost gun” ban.
However, he did score something of a victory when the Supreme Court stepped in to stay that Fifth Circuit ruling. That effectively allowed the Biden Administration to continue enforcing the ban as the legal case played out. Although, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Court will side with Biden on the case’s merits.
Biden’s firearm export rule, if it does come to pass, may have an advantage over the others. Since it deals with exports instead of domestic sales, Second Amendment protections are less likely to be an impediment. The President also generally has more leeway in unilaterally determining foreign policy than domestic matters.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the rule couldn’t face the same sort of issues in clearing standards set by the Administrative Procedures Act that have tripped up the other rules. The Supreme Court has been highly skeptical of executive agencies trying to impose new policies without authorization from Congress. Changing export regulations could be problematic if done in opposition to what Congress has laid out.
Then there’s the question of how much positive impact the policy change could have, even if it does make it through the legal ringer. It suffers from the same political problem as the other initiatives.
Namely, it’s unlikely to be something that breaks through to dissatisfied gun-control advocates who want sweeping bans on AR-15s and other measures Biden can’t deliver without new legislation making it to his desk. At the same time, it’s much more likely to be noticed by gun voters, who are more likely to dislike it because it directly affects them. That’s a bad combination if the goal is to increase approval ahead of a re-election campaign.
