Despite his promise to name Beto “Hell Yes, We’re Going to Take Your AR-15” O’Rourke as gun czar, Joe Biden claims he doesn’t support confiscation of firearms, merely a friendly “voluntary buyback program” and a national registry for law-abiding owners of so-called “assault weapons.”
After two cops were ambushed in Los Angeles by gunmen this weekend, Biden promised that he’ll take “assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” and “weapons of war” off the streets. Setting aside the fact that the AR-15 isn’t a “weapon of war” and it is seldom used in criminality, why is Biden even talking about them now? The person who shot the deputies — at least, according to the video and reporting we have — used pistols.
Like most of the gun-control efforts on the left, Biden’s proposal would do little to nothing to mitigate firearm crimes (is he really contending people who attempt to murder law-enforcement officers are going to sell back their weapons?). This kind of cynical scaremongering is only meant to mislead voters who wince at the very notion of a gun, and to take focus away from a movement that’s been dehumanizing cops and degenerating into violence. And while it’s important to note that we don’t know the shooter’s motivations for sure, as far as we know, AR-15s had absolutely zero to do with the crime in question.