At least Rep. Eric Swalwell is honest about his authoritarianism.
The California Democrat writes in USA Today that it’s not enough to ban so-called assault weapons. Reinstating the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, Swalwell correctly points out, would leave “millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”
It’s time to institute a buyback program instead, he argues. And to “go after resisters” who refuse to sell their rifles back to Uncle Sam. But the arithmetic and the character of the country makes that proposal especially authoritarian.
Like many advocates of gun confiscation, Swalwell points to Australia as an example. They banned assault weapons in 1996 and then proceeded to buy back 643,726 rifles and shotguns. Confiscation was pulled off without a shot a fired in anger.
It is tempting for some to make that one-to-one comparison. It is also dangerous.
Banning the assault weapon in the U.S. like in Australia requires defining them, an already daunting and arbitrary task. Although Swalwell would make allowance for assault weapon ownership by gun clubs, plenty of law-abiding citizens would bristle to discover that their legally purchased firearms had become illegal overnight.
They would do what Swalwell expects. Plenty of people without any criminal record would suddenly own criminal weapons. Armed with pocket Constitutions and recently-banned assault weapons, they would become “resisters.”
There are more guns than people in the U.S. — 310 million according to an outdated 2009 analysis by the National Institute of Justice, and surely many more today. At the time, the domestic arsenal included 110 million rifles and another 82 million shotguns — numbers that exploded during the Obama administration.
(It’s worth noting that although these long-barreled weapons account for roughly two-thirds of the privately owned guns in America, they are used in only 4 percent of annual U.S. murders. The preoccupation with one particular style of rifle, in that context, might seem a bit unscientific.)
Granted, not every household has a gun. Varad Mehta noted at The Federalist that a third to half of the population packs heat in America, about 105 to 160 million people. Of those who were willing to shell out the money and go through the background check, a sizeable number won’t take kindly to being disarmed. Statistically, some of them are your neighbors.
Taking away their guns, doing what Swalwell admits is necessary, will require nothing a military operation against millions of American households, as armed tactical units from federal law enforcement go from door to door. It would turn this country upside down, assuming it ever got past Congress, the president, and the courts.
There has to be a better way, a measure that actually reduces gun violence and doesn’t invite a civil war.
Over at National Review, David French proposed one such measure: The gun-violence restraining order. In the aftermath of the Parkland Shooting, Florida Sens. Marco Rubio, R, and Bill Nelson, D, introduced bipartisan legislation to that end. It doesn’t fire up the progressive base like the buyback and enforcement Swalwell suggests. It offers a real bipartisan solution to stopping real tragedies before they happen.
Swalwell deserves credit for his honesty. He proves once again that, contrary to what gun control advocates often say, there actually is someone talking about taking your guns away.
