'Progressive'
fantasies about guns
Two presidential wannabes seem willing to take the step
others have avoided. Confiscation.
By David Keene - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August
20, 2019
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The idea that Americans have a constitutional right to
own and possess firearms appalls today’s progressives. They believe that if
they could just rid the nation of guns, then armed robberies, gang violence,
mass shootings, rape, violent crime and maybe even suicide would vanish and we
could all live peacefully ever after.
The problem they have faced is not just the National Rifle Association
or the reluctance of non-progressive politicos to advance their cause, but the
fact that tens of millions of voting Americans support private firearms
ownership and that Founders in drafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights
shared their view.
Progressives are prepared to pack the Supreme Court to do
away with Second Amendment roadblocks, but have been forced to accept the fact
that they’re never going to get the public to voluntarily surrender their
firearms to a benevolent government. They know too that there is only one
foolproof way to get their “deplorable” fellow citizens to bend to their wishes
— and that is to mobilize the force of the state against them.
Two Democratic presidential wannabes seem willing to take
the step that the others have thus far avoided. Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten
Gillibrand, struggling to attract support that continues to elude them, have
come out for what other candidates may secretly support: Firearms confiscation.
This week the Texan endorsed what those who don’t like to
use the word now term a “mandatory buyback” of what Democrats call “assault
weapons.” If a rose is a rose by any other name then confiscation by any other
name is, well, confiscation. Mr. O’Rourke may not be a clear speaker or a clear
thinker, but that is what he says he wants. Sen. Gillibrand has already
suggested she would like to see guns taken away from citizens, and if Beto’s
proposal resonates with the Democrat’s leftist base, others can be expected to
advance similar proposals in the near future.
Asked about the proposal by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Louisiana
Congressman Cedric Richmond, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee,
has said it is an idea that, as he put it, “does not offend me” and which he
could support, decrying a world in which “we” can ban plastic straws but not
guns.”
Various cities have had “voluntary buyback” programs for
years, but as President Obama’s National Institute of Justice concluded, they
have been largely ineffective. A few years ago in Milwaukee, feds tried a
different approach. They set up a storefront to buy firearms from bad guys and
indict the sellers for illegally trafficking in guns. One of their “customers”
quickly discovered he could buy guns at Gander Mountain, an
outdoor store, haul them down the road and sell them at a profit to the feds.
He was one of the “traffickers” they caught.
The evidence suggests any “voluntary” buyback program is
doomed as expensive and ineffective. The firearms turned in for cash are turned
in because the program is willing to pay more for them than the guns are worth.
Studies indicate they are rarely the sorts of guns used to commit crimes. The
guns purchased by the cities that run these programs come not from criminals
but from law-abiding citizens who realize they can dump unwanted cheap or
broken guns at a profit.
The Obama administration concluded that to be effective,
a buyback program would have to be “mandatory,” requiring gun owners to turn in
their guns or be charged with a crime, but was unwilling to go quite that far.
Today’s left is far less squeamish about things like the Constitution. The
result is open support for simply confiscating firearms, but calling it some
temporarily palatable euphemism that polls well.
Folks like Beto would start with “assault weapons,” but
would at the same time require everyone to register their handguns and long
arms, so that if they decide to expand “mandatory buybacks” in the future they
will know just where the guns they want to “buy back” are to be found. It’s
hard to visualize or for many gun owners to imagine federal agents going
door-to-door to demand that free citizens turn in their guns or face fines or
jail time, but this is what people like Mr. O’Rourke are working toward. It is
hard to imagine the feds going door to door to confiscate guns, but that’s
where what he is proposing would lead.
The National Rifle Association
and other Second Amendment supporters have faced criticism over the years for
arguing that seemingly commonsensical proposals from gun control advocates are
likely to lead to a slippery slope ending with confiscation. It is increasingly
obvious that the slope looms before us and today’s progressives Democrats are
greasing it.
• David A. Keene is an editor at large for The
Washington Times.
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