Boston Globe: “Hand Over Your Weapons”

by William Teach | November 14, 2017 7:38 am

[1]

It’s great how liberals are always saying “nobody is talking about taking your guns” right before they talk about taking your guns

With no end in sight for America's gun epidemic, it may be time to consider a radical approach: seizing millions of weapons from law abiding citizens. My latest in @GlobeIdeas[2]: https://t.co/i4hS6DOo8p[3]

— David Scharfenberg (@dscharfGlobe) November 10, 2017[4]

From the screed[5]

Trouble is, it’s not clear the “something” Democrats typically demand would make a real dent in the nation’s epidemic of gun violence. Congress can ban assault weapons, but they account for just a tiny sliver of the country’s 33,000 annual firearm deaths. And tighter background checks will do nothing to cut down on the 310 million guns already in circulation.

In other words, the proposals aren’t just difficult to enact in the current political climate; their practical effects would also be quite limited. On occasion, though, leading Democrats will make oblique reference to a more sweeping policy change: seizing a huge number of weapons from law-abiding citizens.

At a New Hampshire forum in the fall of 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke approvingly of an Australian gun buyback program that collected more than 650,000 weapons — a buyback that, she neglected to mention, was compulsory.

Obama, Kamala Harris, and many others have talked about the “Australian solution.”

The logic of gun control lies, at bottom, in substantially reducing the number of deadly weapons on the street — and confiscation is far and away the most effective approach. Is there any conceivable turn of events in our politics that could make confiscation happen? And what would a mass seizure look like?

There’s deadly weapons in the streets …. just witness Democratic Party run cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore … being used by criminals, so, let’s disarm people trying to protect themselves who have nothing to do with the crime

Here in the United States, interest in large-scale gun buybacks — both voluntary and involuntary — has mounted with each mass shooting. Matt Miller, a journalist and onetime senior fellow with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, has proposed what he calls a “massive, debt-financed” buyback.

The idea is to supersize the small-scale, voluntary buybacks that happen in American cities — offering hundreds of dollars more per weapon in a bid to make them more effective. “Instead of $200 a gun, Uncle Sam might offer $500,” Miller wrote, in an opinion piece in the Washington Postafter Sandy Hook. “After all, overpaying powerful constituencies to achieve public policy goals is a time-honored American tradition; we do it every day with Medicare drug benefits and defense contractors, to name just two.”

Good luck with that. Most legally obtained firearms cost more than $500. Certainly, those scary looking rifles are worth more. But, perhaps some will trade in old ones not worth much and put the money towards a new firearm.

John Rosenthal, co-founder and chairman of Massachusetts-based Stop Handgun Violence, says it may be time to embrace a mandatory buyback — the relentless tide of mass shootings leaving weary activists with little choice.

Remember, Democrats are not talking about taking away guns from law abiding citizens.

Many of those hard-core gun owners see their weapons as a guard against government overreach. And sending government agents to claim them could end very, very badly. An NRA article on the specter of Australian-style confiscation coming to the United States is subtitled “There Will Be Blood.”

Ya think?

Part of the problem is the sheer scale of the enterprise. An operation on par with the Australian buyback — claiming one-fifth of American guns — would mean tens of thousands of police officers collecting some 60 million guns. It is, on some level, simply unimaginable.

Part of the problem is that law enforcement leans Republican, and officers would refuse to engage in something so anti-Constitutional.

Ultimately, if gun-control advocates really want to stanch the blood, there’s no way around it: They’ll have to persuade more people of the need to confiscate millions of those firearms, as radical as that idea may now seem.

It’s interesting how Democrats always want to disarm the law abiding while doing nothing about the criminals.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[6]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[7].

Endnotes:
  1. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gun-control.png
  2. @GlobeIdeas: https://twitter.com/GlobeIdeas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
  3. https://t.co/i4hS6DOo8p: https://t.co/i4hS6DOo8p
  4. November 10, 2017: https://twitter.com/dscharfGlobe/status/929036124386885632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
  5. screed: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/11/10/hand-over-your-weapons/6IxJLanMKGak7RvCLipwbN/story.html
  6. Pirate’s Cove: http://www.thepiratescove.us/
  7. @WilliamTeach: http://twitter.com/WilliamTeach

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/boston-globe-hand-weapons/