Beto O'Rourke Gives Obama-Style Promise About Gun Ownership
We’ve heard this one before, and we know how it ends.
A prominent Democrat, campaigning for a goal liberals have aspired to for decades, is making promises to the American people that what the Democratic Party has in mind really isn’t about overturning bedrock parts of American life – just improving things for everybody.
And naturally, it’s all lies.
It isn’t former President Barack Obama stumping for the Affordable Care Act, and telling Americans that if they like their health care plan, they can keep their health care plan.
It’s the latest liberal wunderkind, former Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, using a liberal podcast appearance to push gun control by telling American gun owners that if they like their AR-15s, they can keep their AR-15s, as long as they’re being used “responsibly and safely.”
That was the line O’Rourke was peddling Friday during a recording of the podcast “Political Party LIVE!” in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“We allow people, in this country, to buy weapons that were designed, engineered and sold to the United States military for the express purpose of killing people as effectively as possible in as great a number as possible,” O’Rourke said, before describing how effective the AR-15 rifle is at doing just that.
Then he got to the part where he echoed the last Democratic president in the White House.
“If you own an AR-15, keep it,” O’Rourke said. “Continue to use it responsibly and safely. I just don’t think we need to sell any more weapons of war into this public.”
Beto O’Rourke: “If you own an AR-15, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly and safely. I just don’t think that we need to sell anymore weapons of war into this public.” pic.twitter.com/uqMA1jWOTf
— The Hill (@thehill) March 17, 2019
That should be setting off alarm bells for every Second Amendment advocate in the country – as well as any American who simply respects the Constitution as the foundational document of the land – because the ignorance contained in the statement is almost shocking.
“We allow people, in this country, to buy weapons…” O’Rourke said.
Well, yes, “we” do in the sense that the Constitution was written on behalf of “We the People.” But it’s not the Beto O’Rourkes and the Nancy Pelosis that allow people to buy weapons in this country.
It’s not even the Donald Trumps, Ted Cruzes, or Rand Pauls.
It’s the Constitution itself.
And even though It’s been clear for some time that Democrats have scant respect for the Constitution and the men who drafted it — and O’Rourke himself has publicly wondered whether the Constitution is still practical in 21s Century America — to have a man who aspires to be the successor of George Washington talking so blithely about a right guaranteed by the Constitution is infuriating.
It also shows that American gun owners have very good reason to be suspicious of any proposal Democrats come up with under the billing of “common sense” gun laws.
When Obama took his “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” show on the road back 2009 and 2010, before the disastrous passage of the disastrous Affordable Care Act, he could at least pretend to be telling the truth – and liberals could pretend to believe it.
But the wreckage of the Obamacare rollout and the turmoil it visited on the American health care market eventually made it so obvious it was a lie that the liberal-leaning PolitiFact even named it “Lie of the Year” in 2013.
Now comes O’Rourke with a similar message.
But there’s a big difference between Obama’s health care line and O’Rourke’s prattle — because as bad as Obama’s talk was, O’Rourke’s is even worse.
Unlike the amorphous “right” to health care liberals love to champion, weapons ownership is black-letter right of American citizens, written right there into the Constitution.
Whatever empty promises Obama spouted to try to get Americans onboard with the Democrats’ health care reform, the chance to keep a general practitioner for the family was not one of the freedoms the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia chose to include in the charter of their new nation.
The right to keep and bear arms is a different story.
But O’Rourke’s rhetoric is the same as Obama’s and it means exactly the same.
Under a Democratic presidency – whether O’Rourke’s or any of the other 17 members of his party who are running so far – the statement “if you like your AR-15, you can keep your AR-15” will be just as meaningless as it was when Obama mouthed the same lie about health care.
We’ve all heard this one before. And we all know how it ends.
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