Beto’s outburst (Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, with a Freedom Index rating of 25 out of 100, who is seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for president) continues to resonate and generate angst and joy days after his performance at the Democrats’ debate Thursday night.
A sound bite from an outburst has already become an unwelcome appellation for the Democrats and a source of encouragement for those in the freedom fight.
When O’Rourke was asked by the moderator if he was proposing taking firearms away from their owners, he answered:
I am, if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield. If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that, so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers.
When we see that being used against children … and in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15, and that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time — hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.
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O’Rourke’s strategy for disarming Americans? “Mandatory buybacks,” which phrase is synonymous with “confiscation.” First, the semi-automatic weapons targeted specifically by him will be forcibly removed from their owners and then likely spread, via governmental “mission creep,” to include every other firearm owned by every private gun owner in the country.
O’Rourke’s outburst is no surprise to those familiar with the ongoing war against the Second Amendment. Democrat Senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, made clear her, and her party’s, intention back in 1994 during debates over the Clinton assault weapons ban: “If I could have gotten … an outright ban — ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn in your guns’ — I would have!”
In a conversation with John Lott, head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, then-president Democrat Barack Obama said, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”
Beto’s outburst is right in line with other totalitarians in history, including Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Communist Party chairman who oversaw the murder of more than 30 million Chinese during his “Great Leap Forward” following World War II. Said Chairman Mao:
All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns. That way no guns can ever be used to command the party….
Government begins at the end of the gun barrel.
Beto’s sound bite is causing much angst among some Democrats, including Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) who told CNN on Friday: “I’m a gun owner. My sons and I have gone skeet shooting and hunting and, frankly, I don’t think having our presidential candidates, like Congressman O’Rourke did, say that we’re going to try to take people’s guns against their will is either a wise policy or political move.”
He added, to the joy of pro-Second Amendment activists, “I frankly think that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying Democrats are coming for their guns.”
Anti-gun Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania agreed with Coons, tweeting that Beto’s “rhetoric undermines and hurts bipartisan efforts to actually make progress on commonsense gun safety efforts, like expanding background checks.”
It’s more than likely that Beto’s affirmation is helping dampen enthusiasm both for those expanded background checks and for red flag laws being debated in Washington. Gun Owners of America just e-mailed its supporters that it has generated more than three million e-mails and letters opposing them, and that was before O’Rourke’s outburst on Thursday night.
Beto’s sound bite is causing heartburn at the Washington Post as well. Post columnist Philip Bump wrote on Friday that “O’Rourke has damaged his own chances of being elected president by staking out a position so distant from the center. What’s more, he has probably harmed the eventual Democratic nominee for president in 2020 by giving President Trump and his allies the ability to claim that Democrats intend to take guns away from the public.”
Bump reported that it didn’t take Republicans long to take advantage of O’Rourke’s admission:
On Friday morning Trump’s reelection team did exactly that, posting a video on social media calling Democrats a “joke” — because they “will take away your guns.” To illustrate that point, the video depicts a handgun in a no-smoking style red circle.
As for O’Rourke’s chances at becoming the Democrat Party’s nominee, RealClearPolitics reports that he has support from just 2.8 percent of those polled.
This writer, although not yet ready to award O’Rourke the Presidential Medal of Freedom, applauds the former Texas congressman for removing all doubt about the Democrats’ intentions over the private ownership of firearms in the United States. Thanks to “Beto” there is no more shading, no more deception, no more waffling, no more disemblng over the issue.
Photo: artas / iStock / Getty Images Plus
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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