President Obama spoke about the government confiscating certain types of firearms, which many Second Amendment advocates consider the third rail of gun policy.
In an interview with comedian Marc Maron on Monday, noticed by National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, the President praised Australia for taking away people’s guns after a mass shooting in their country.
“It was just so shocking the entire country said, ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws’, and they did. And it hasn’t happened since,” Obama said during the interview.
The Washington Post detailed how Australia created strict gun control laws in response to a massacre in Tasmania that left 35 people dead in 1996. Since the major gun confiscation, Australia hasn’t been plagued with any mass shootings.
Australia’s law banned semi-automatic, automatic rifles, and shotguns. It also instituted a mandatory buy-back program for newly-banned weapons already owned by citizens.
Cooke explained why that plan couldn’t work in America.
“In plain speak, that’s ‘confiscation.’ Were the United States to do this — and it can’t because it’s illegal – the federal government would have to confiscate around 150 million firearms (not 40 million, as WaPo suggests). That’s quite the haul given that ‘nobody is talking about taking anyone’s guns away.’ Can you say, ‘civil war’,” Cooke wrote.
