Beto O'Rourke: As president, I'd institute a mandatory buyback of assault weapons

[TexasTowelie]

On Aug. 3, my hometown of El Paso, Texas — one of the safest cities in America — was attacked in one of the deadliest mass shootings in our country’s modern history. This was an act of white nationalist terror, and one we could have prevented.

All countries have video games. All countries struggle with mental health. All countries deal with hatred. But only America has more guns than human beings — 390 million firearms in a country of 329 million people — which kill nearly 40,000 people every year.

Some of the nurses, surgeons and doctors heroically treating victims at Del Sol and University Medical Center in El Paso told me they hadn’t seen such horrific wounds since they were deployed abroad in our armed forces, saving the lives of soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

When the killer’s mother heard he had ordered an “AK”-type firearm, she wondered why her son, who was not enlisted in the military, needed a weapon like that. She was asking on behalf of herself, on behalf of her son, and on behalf of our country.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/22/beto-orourke-president-institute-mandatory-assault-weapons-buyback-editorials-debates/2089652001/

[customerserviceguy]

1. What does "mandatory" buyback mean?

Is there a period of time when people can turn in guns, get a few bucks for it, then we confiscate them and put the resistors in prison?

Look for that to start a civil war.

[crazytown]

2. A: Mandated by law

[customerserviceguy]

3. And easy to characterize

as "gun grabbing". No worries, Beto's not ever going to get to five percent in the polls anyway, and will be gone by Christmas.

[crazytown]

5. For a practical precedent there were/are the buy backs in

Australia and New Zealand.

for a political precedent ... there isn't one, nothing comparable in American politics.

[JI7]

6. his issue isn't going to go away and he will keep pushing it . and most people agree with him

[customerserviceguy]

8. "Most people"

agree with expanded background checks, not "mandatory" buybacks followed by confiscation and prison for those not willing to sell.

This will be a losing issue for us if we pursue it. Stick to background checks and closing loopholes, and you have a shot of winning and being able to claim a mandate to implement them.

[jcgoldie]

4. Good

Beto is pushing the conversation in the right direction on so many issues.

[samir.g]

7. It's past time

Take them all. No more repeating firearms on the street.

[Celerity]

9. he is doing his best to make sure Biden will not pick him as VP with this posture

Do not get me wrong, I am radically anti-gun, in my world the 2nd Amendment would be TOAST and we would go to an Aussie style firearm law structure (or harsher), BUT, that is never going to happen in gunhumperville 'Murica. To advocate even this relatively tame plan (tame to me) is, unfortunately, political suicide until we un-fuck the nation.

Hope to live long enough (based off family I should have another 70 years or so left, knock on wood and curse off climate change) to see a coerced confiscation of assault weapons of war. If the slack-jaw RW'ers want to resist and start shooting cops and/or soldiers, well I guess their herd gets thinned a bit. They brought it all on themselves at that point. Their crazed interpretation of the 2nd Amendment does not entitle them to force the nation into a partial suicide pact.

[J_William_Ryan]

10. Congress would never enact such a measure.

And if enacted, it wouldn’t pass Constitutional muster.

[cstanleytech]

11. Sorry but we honestly need real change if we want to address the gun issue and that change has to be

amending the 2nd otherwise all the laws on the books and gun buyback plans are worthless.
After all programs to buy guns back can be ended by future governments and laws can be tossed out by the courts and or repealed by the government but well written Constitutional amendments are pretty solid.