President Joe Biden once again took aim at Second Amendment supporters during National Action Network's annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Washington, contending that someone would need "F-15s" to take on the federal government, not AR-15s. 

"I love my right-wing friends who talk about the tree of liberty is water of the blood of patriots," he said. "If you need to work about taking on the federal government, you need some F-15s. You don't need an AR-15."

Thomas Jefferson once said in a letter, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."

Biden claimed that support for the Second Amendment was "about money," and said that so-called assault weapons had "no social redeeming value."

Not the first time

It's a common argument by Biden as he tries to justify his aims to ban AR-15s and other semi-automatic weapons he considers "assault weapons."

The Second Amendment states that Americans have the "right to bear arms" for their defense, particularly against the government.

July 2021, he said similarly, "You need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons."

He also claimed that there have always been limits on the Second Amendment, which is untrue.

"Couldn't buy a cannon"

"The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn't buy a cannon," Biden claimed.

But the first ever gun regulation was not passed until 1934, more than 150 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified.

Despite repeated fact checks about his claims, however, Biden continues to repeat them.

Biden's logic is dangerous because it encourages people to assume that there is no way for a citizen to fight the federal government, so we all need to become serfs and toe the line no matter how egregious things get.

Healthy respect

There needs to be both a healthy respect for the power of the federal government and of the individual to do what is necessary to change that government when it steps out of line.

And while weapons are always a last resort and not something anyone ever wants to have to use, our Founding Fathers knew that the option needed to be there in order to keep the power-grabbing tendencies of the government in check. Biden and the Democrats would like nothing more than for the government to have supreme power in people's lives, so they will do everything they can to curb people's Second Amendment rights.

They cannot be allowed to get away with it.