Share
Commentary

Dems Who Don't Want to Confiscate Your Guns Push Bill to Confiscate Your Guns

Share

The Democrats have long told Americans they don’t want to confiscate their guns. They just want laws that ban dangerous guns, they say, and those horrible high-capacity magazines.

And maybe they want to confiscate your guns easier, perhaps without due process at first. And really, what they think is a “high-capacity magazine” and an “assault weapon” are continually changing, so you could see larger caliber handguns or other rifles considered “assault weapons,” and then magazines getting smaller and smaller. Of course, if you owned any of these things, you would have to sell them back to the government at the price the government decided to pay you — if they paid you at all.

In short, they don’t want to confiscate your guns now, they just want to confiscate them slowly.

If you don’t believe me, believe Rep. Eric Swalwell. He’s a former prosecutor, and he wants “military-style, semiautomatic assault weapons” banned.

In an op-ed for USA Today published on Thursday, rather ominously titled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters: Ex-prosecutor in Congress,” the California Democrat backed a bill where the government would buy them back from you — and anyone who decides not to sell it back will be arrested and prosecuted.

“Trauma surgeons and coroners will tell you the high-velocity bullet fired from a military-style, semiautomatic assault weapon moves almost three times as fast as a 9mm handgun bullet, delivering far more energy,” Salwell wrote.

“The bullets create cavities through the victim, wrecking a wider swath of tissue, organs and blood vessels. And a low-recoil weapon with a higher-capacity magazine means more of these deadlier bullets can be fired accurately and quickly without reloading.”

He says that his opinion — and the nation’s — on the “moral equivalence” of so-called “military-style, semiautomatic assault weapons” has been changed by the students who survived the Parkland shooting. (Except for Kyle Kashuv, of course.)

“There’s something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers’ demands,” he wrote.

Do you think the Democrats want to take away our guns?

“They dismiss the moral equivalence we’ve made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment. I’ve been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that ‘we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.’

“The Parkland teens have taught us there is no right more important than every student’s right to come home after class. The right to live is supreme over any other.”

And, to Swalwell, that right isn’t protected by the former Brady Bill — the semiautomatic weapons ban that was in place until the middle of the Bush administration.

“Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come,” Swalwell wrote.

“Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons,” he says. “The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.”

Related:
Mark Milley Fears He Will Face a Court-Martial When Trump Enters White House

This is actually a lot worse than it sounds on face. The first problem is that, like most liberals, what constitutes a “military-style, semiautomatic assault weapon” is left mostly undefined, as is a “higher-capacity magazine.” That means if what’s covered under the bill to begin with isn’t effective against mass shootings (and it won’t be, since there’s not a whole lot of effective difference between an AR-15 and a handgun in a close-combat mass shooting situation, no matter what trauma surgeons and coroners are telling him) they’ll just ban more stuff. And more stuff. And more and more, until guns are ostensibly illegal and we’re the U.K., trying to get our criminals not to use pointy objects because the gun ban there has worked so well that London is now the knife attack capital of the Western world.

The reason I know this is because Swalwell essentially says he has no respect for the Second Amendment without coming out and saying it. He couches it, instead, in the struggle of the “Parkland teens” who have “taught us there is no right more important than every student’s right to come home after class. The right to live is supreme over any other.”

He also implies that he no longer believes “we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.” One has to go, and in Swalwell’s rubric, it’s fairly obvious which one. Just imagine someone saying this about the First Amendment and picture the outcry.

While this is all focused on “military-style, semiautomatic assault weapons” (a term that sounds scary but doesn’t quite exist and is necessarily fungible for the benefit of liberal lawmakers) and a “higher-capacity magazine” (what “higher-capacity” entails is also exactly what lawmakers say it is), make no mistake: this is the first move on all gun owners.

Rep. Eric Swalwell may be the only honest Democrat in Washington. While the Democrats don’t necessarily want to move so quickly on this, saying they instead prefer the reinstatement of the Brady Bill or more stringent background checks, this is a glimpse into where the party wants to go. After all, do you hear Swalwell being called on the carpet by leadership? Of course not. This logic is a preview of where the left’s attack on the Second Amendment is going to head — and every American gun owner ought to be on alert.

Truth and Accuracy

Submit a Correction →



We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Tags:
, , , ,
Share
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.

Conversation