'Progressive' fantasies about guns

[Charlie T Waite]

By David Keene - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 20, 2019

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The idea that Americans have a constitutional right to own and possess firearms appalls today’s progressives. They believe that if they could just rid the nation of guns, then armed robberies, gang violence, mass shootings, rape, violent crime and maybe even suicide would vanish and we could all live peacefully ever after.

The problem they have faced is not just the National Rifle Association or the reluctance of non-progressive politicos to advance their cause, but the fact that tens of millions of voting Americans support private firearms ownership and that Founders in drafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights shared their view.

Progressives are prepared to pack the Supreme Court to do away with Second Amendment roadblocks, but have been forced to accept the fact that they’re never going to get the public to voluntarily surrender their firearms to a benevolent government. They know too that there is only one foolproof way to get their “deplorable” fellow citizens to bend to their wishes — and that is to mobilize the force of the state against them.

Two Democratic presidential wannabes seem willing to take the step that the others have thus far avoided. Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten Gillibrand, struggling to attract support that continues to elude them, have come out for what other candidates may secretly support: Firearms confiscation.

This week the Texan endorsed what those who don’t like to use the word now term a “mandatory buyback” of what Democrats call “assault weapons.” If a rose is a rose by any other name then confiscation by any other name is, well, confiscation. Mr. O’Rourke may not be a clear speaker or a clear thinker, but that is what he says he wants. Sen. Gillibrand has already suggested she would like to see guns taken away from citizens, and if Beto’s proposal resonates with the Democrat’s leftist base, others can be expected to advance similar proposals in the near future.