Biden signals support for banning most popular U.S. handgun — the 9mm

President Joe Biden on Monday signaled support for banning firearms that shoot 9mm rounds, the most popular bullet caliber in the world.

"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," Biden told reporters outside of the White House nearly one week after 19 children were killed in an elementary school shooting. "Not that many more people were being shot, but the death rate was up."

The president then recounted a conversation he had at least two decades ago with a New York trauma doctor: "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.'" 

Breitbart News fact-checked Biden's statement that a 9mm round will blow an organ out of a body as "false."

"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," the president continued. "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."

Biden has claimed multiple times that cannons were not covered under the Second Amendment. Last year, The Washington Post fact-checked the statement as "false" and gave him four Pinocchios.

During his remarks with reporters Monday, Biden also attacked the pro-Second Amendment argument that firearms are needed to take on a corrupt government.

"Well, to do that, you need an F-15, you know? Biden said. "Or you need an Abrams tank."

Multiple ammunition websites report that 9mm ammunition, common in handguns, is the most popular round in the world.