Much has been made of presidential candidate Robert Francis O’Rourke’s statement, “Hell, yes, we’ll take your AR-15!” Yet overlooked amidst the focus on what’s understood to be his vow — to confiscate all firearms classified (incorrectly) as “assault weapons” — is that O’Rourke has essentially proposed something far more sweeping: outlawing all or virtually all guns in the United States.
In fact, other Democrats have tacitly advocated likewise.
The clue lies in the answer O’Rourke gave when asked at last Thursday’s Democrat debate whether he actually was saying he’d confiscate Americans’ firearms. “I am,” he replied — “if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield.” Other times O’Rourke and fellow Democrats have spoken of criminalizing “weapons of war.” The issue?
As I rhetorically asked just recently, how “many guns weren’t designed as ‘weapons of war’? Bolt-action rifles were once state-of-the-art weapons of war. So was the flintlock. Go back even further, and clubs were weapons of war, and many people are still killed with them today.” So, clearly, any vow to criminalize guns “designed to kill people on a battlefield” is, taken literally, a proposal to ban essentially all firearms.
Of course, O’Rourke certainly didn’t mean to relate this idea via his statements. He and other anti-gun politicians generally know little about what they purport to be qualified to legislate on, in this case firearms. They don’t understand the designations “weapons of war” and “assault rifles” meaning, but only their rhetorical effectiveness. And if pressed, they’d certainly claim they only intend to confiscate today’s weapons of war. The problem?
This isn’t the AR-15. Not only was it never a standard issue U.S. military rifle, but the relevant firearm that was — the M-16, which has the same platform but isn’t limited to semi-automatic fire (one trigger pull, one shot) — no longer is. It was supplanted by the M-4, which itself is slated to be replaced with a completely different rifle with more effective ammunition.
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So if you don’t actually want to criminalize all firearms, anti-gun politicians, how modern do “weapons of war” have to be to warrant confiscation? This question would be asked if we had a real press corps.
Instead, the mainstream media praised O’Rourke’s debate confiscation proposal as “bold,” and the Washington Post’s Dan Balz called it “a rallying point of the night regardless of how it will feed conservatives’ arguments that the secret ambition of all Democrats is to confiscate everyone’s guns.” Yet, as American Thinker opines today, “Basic logic should tell you that conservatives don’t have to ‘argue’ about ‘secret ambitions’ anymore, since thanks to Beto, the ambition is now out in the open.”
In reality, though, it was out in the open long ago. Note that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said of AR-15-type rifles in 1995 already, “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,’ I would have done it” (video below).
So what’s changed today isn’t leftist intent, but what the electorate will tolerate. But is the real intent to confiscate all guns? Or is this crazy, tin-foil-hat handwringing? Consider:
• “Assault rifle” is an arbitrary propaganda term; the weapons in question (i.e., AR-15) are merely semi-automatic firearms with a “military look.” Don’t judge a book by its cover.
• Only three to four percent of gun murders are committed with rifles of any kind, and criminals using AR-15-class weapons account for approximately one percent. “Handguns are used in about nine times as many murders” as “rifles, shotguns, and other firearms combined,” reports the Daily Signal. Moreover, points out The Heritage Foundation, “More people are stabbed to death every year than are murdered with rifles.”
• Far from devastating, the AR-15’s standard round is small caliber (nearly the same as a .22) and has the second least “killing power” of the 41 cartridges found on this list (note: when loaded with 5.56mm ammo, the power is somewhat greater but still relatively lacking). In other words, any number of hunting rifles are far more devastating than an AR.
• A semi-automatic or even pump-action shotgun would be more effective in most mass shooting situations than would an AR-15.
So is it believable that gun grabbers would limit confiscation to AR-15-type rifles and be wholly uninterested in firearms used in infinitely more murders and those that are far more effective (the majority of legal guns)?
In reality, if O’Rourke were truly “bold” and honest he’d admit that his real aim is power and that gun control may just be a means to achieve it. And if most anti-gun activists were honest they’d admit that their real aim is complete firearms confiscation via incrementalism.
The good news is that gun owners appear poised to defy anti-Second Amendment laws. For example, while New Jersey banned last year magazines holding more than 10 rounds, not one such magazine has yet been relinquished to authorities. This spirit was well reflected in the top comment under the above Feinstein video. “If she and Giffords and Obama and Schumer et al. ban guns,” Brassy Tack wrote, “mine won’t be illegal … they’ll just be “undocumented” (touché!).
Better still than defiance, however, is ensuring there’s nothing to defy — which there will be if Americans empower Democrats next November.
