"We need to buy back every single assault weapon." -Beto O'Rourke
Democratic 2020 candidate Beto O’Rourke is being hailed a hero by the left after stating his newest presidential promise: if elected, all AK-47 and AR-15 gun owners will be required to sell their "assault rifles" back to the government.
This is wrong on so many levels. For one, unless you are physically hitting people with a rifle, then there is no such thing as an "assault rifle." Despite what liberals believe, the "AR" in "AR-15" actually stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it back in the 1950s.
For two, the government has absolutely NO right to determine what guns we are allowed to own. The second Amendment clearly states that our right to bear arms "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED." Someone let Beto know that.
Buy them all back. https://t.co/bnQNIwW876
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 1, 2019
While answering questions on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia about the government taking guns, he said, “I want to be really clear that that’s exactly what we are going to do.” He later added on Twitter, "We need to buy back every single assault weapon."
Any person who owns an AK-47 or AR-15 will“have to sell them to the government,” he said.
We need to buy back every single assault weapon. https://t.co/06UhoUGrzD
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) August 31, 2019
Mr O’Rourke, whose mandatory buyback programme is a part of his comprehensive gun control plan, has also called for a ban on assault-style guns and high capacity magazines, which he has also said would be required to be sold to the US government under his administration.
Mr O’Rourke had made gun control a central focus of his 2020 campaign after suspending it to mourn with the community in his hometown of El Paso, Texas after a gunman stormed a Walmart earlier this month, killing 22 people and injuring 24 others.
The gunman in that tragedy used an AK-47 which he said he purchased overseas.
That shooting occurred just hours before a gunman in Dayton, Ohio unloaded a pistol with 100-round drum magazines near a bar on a popular street for nightlife, killing nine people and injuring 27 more.
Mr O’Rourke has also connected the spate of shootings with an apparent rise in violent white supremacy and the leadership of Donald Trump.
“With 40,000 gun violence deaths in this country, not all of them are connected to white nationalism, white supremacy or white terrorism, but ... you do have to connect the hatred, the racism, the president's words and actions with the accessibility of those weapons that afford someone the means to conduct this kind of terror in this country,” O'Rourke said earlier this week.
“If I don't connect these dots, then I am complicit in the next mass murder or the next act of domestic terror,” he added.
If this guy thinks for one second that red-blooded Americans are going to hand over their guns to the government then he's insane. There will be another civil war before that happens.
And anyone who would willingly give up their 2nd Amendment rights deserves whatever is coming to them.