President Joe Biden said Monday that "there's simply no rational basis" for permitting ownership of 9 mm bullets, which are typically used in handguns.
Biden said when he was a senator, a trauma doctor told him "a 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body."
"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 said.
Twitter users were baffled by Biden's claims, saying that 9 mm bullets are often used in handguns intended for self-defense.
"'A 9MM bullet blows the lung out of the body' has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard," Republican congressional candidate Robby Starbuck wrote. "Why do the people who know the least about guns want to yap their gums the most about guns?"
"I had wondered if Biden was mistaking 9mm for AR rounds," Republican strategist Matt Whitlock wrote. "But he was intentionally targeting 9mm, the most popular home defense caliber in America."
RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway wrote, "We're banning handguns now?"
Nine-millimeter pistols made up a majority, 56.8 percent, of all pistols produced in 2019, Fox News reported.
The president on Monday also repeated his long-debunked claim that a citizen "couldn't buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed."