Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Joe Biden Promising That If He Wins, He's "Coming For" Your Guns

Fact Check

  • by: Lead Stories Staff

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Joe Biden Promising That If He Wins, He's "Coming For" Your Guns

Did Joe Biden, the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, promise in a video that he's "coming for" your guns? No, that's not true: This is a complete misrepresentation of what the former vice president actually said in the video. Biden was seated with Beto O'Rourke, the one-time presidential candidate who had just endorsed Biden. In the clip, Biden said he was "coming for" O'Rourke, not for people's guns.

The claim originated from a video post published by Conservative Daily on March 4, 2020, titled "Raw Video: Joe Biden Promises That If He Wins, He's "Coming For" Your Guns" (archived here). It opened:

Joe Biden went to grab a late-night hamburger with Beto O'Rourke and when asked about his gun control policy, looked directly into the camera and promised that if he wins, he is "coming for" Americans' guns.

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Users on social media only saw this:

Raw Video: Joe Biden Promises That If He Wins, He's "Coming For" Your Guns

Joe Biden went to grab a late-night hamburger with Beto O'Rourke and when asked about his gun control policy, looked directly into the camera and promised that if he wins, he is "coming for" Americans' guns.

After endorsing Biden at a rally in Dallas, Texas, on March 2, 2020, the former rival took Biden to Whataburger, a famous Texas fast-food hamburger chain. O'Rourke's wife, Amy Hoover Sanders, was also seated at the table. In a short video making the rounds, Biden spoke to the camera while praising O'Rourke.

Here is a transcript of what Biden actually said in the short video clip:

This guy can change the face of what we're dealing with, with regard to guns, assault weapons, with regard to dealing with climate change, and I just want to warn Amy, if I win, I'm coming for him.

In the video, Biden did not say he was coming for gun owners. He said that if he won the election, he was coming for O'Rourke. In other words, Biden would likely tap the Texan and former 2020 contender for a role in his administration.

Notably, the headline in the YouTube clip only put quotation marks around "coming for" but not "your guns," because Biden never said that what the poster is suggesting. Regardless of what Biden's or O'Rourke's views on gun control may be, the headline on this clip misrepresented what he actually said.

We wrote about disinformation on YouTube before. Here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Updates:

  • 2020-03-05T22:26:38Z 2020-03-05T22:26:38Z
    An earlier version of this fact check was misunderstood to mean that Biden never made any promises about gun control; that is obviously not the case. The headline was adjusted to clarify this fact-check is only about this particular video. It is clear Biden is talking about "him" (i.e. Beto) and not "'em" (i.e. your guns) because right before he says it he is addressing Amy (O'Rourke's wife), and says he just "warned" her. It seems unlikely he would need to warn her about gun policy; a warning about a possible cabinet job taking away her husband makes much more sense in this context.

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