Gun Confiscation Big Topic in Democrat Presidential Debate Last Night.

If you didn't watch the debate, Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke's modern sporting rifle confiscation was a hot topic.  Here is a summary of the exchange courtesy of Bloomberg's anti-rights mouthpiece The Trace:

Beto O'Rourke defended his call for a mandatory buyback program on logical grounds, arguing that candidates who conclude that military-inspired rifles are too dangerous for civilian sales should also support removing existing weapons from circulation. But he moderated his rhetoric, saying that "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15" does not mean door-to-door searches. Instead, O'Rourke would appeal to gun owners' sense of responsibility: "The expectation is that Americans will follow the law. I believe in this country. I believe in my fellow Americans. I believe that they will do the right thing." Blatant non-compliers, under his approach, would face unspecified "consequences from law enforcement."
Pete Buttigieg continued his criticism of O'Rourke's mandatory buyback pitch as a campaign ploy: "We cannot wait for purity tests. We have to just get something his done." The South Bend mayor favors pushing for bans on new assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines, universal background checks, and red flag laws, which he notably tied to reducing the suicides "which are not being talked about nearly enough as a huge part of the gun violence epidemic in this country."
Julián Castro explained his opposition to mandatory gun buybacks by touching on the problem of police shootings: “In the places that I grew up in, we weren't exactly looking for another reason for cops to come banging on the door."
Kamala Harris supports mandatory buybacks but pivoted to focus on her vow to use executive actions to enact new gun safety measures in the face of Congressional gridlock. We explored the limits of that approach here.
Joe Biden pitched his alternative to aggressive regulation of existing assault-style weapons: give owners the option of selling those guns to the government, or registering them.
Senator Elizabeth Warren also favors registration, which was successfully used to limit civilian ownership of fully automatic rifles under the National Firearms Act: "I want to use the method we used, for example, with machine guns. We registered them, we put in a huge penalty if you didn't register them, and a huge tax on them, and then let people turn them in, and it got machine guns out of the hands of people.
Senator Cory Booker used his time to highlight his support for mandatory gun licensing: “I'm living with a sense of urgency on this problem ... like millions of Americans, we live in communities where these weapons, where these gun shots are real every single day.”

National Review's Jim Geraghty points out this morning that Beto's apparent "moderation" as The Trace put it was short lived as he went back to the "Hell Yes we're going to take them" on MSMBC this morning:

Beto: Okay, Maybe the Cops Will Have to Confiscate Your AR-15

This morning, Beto O’Rourke told Joe Scarborough that if people refused to comply with his mandatory buyback of AR-15s, “in that case, I think there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm.” There are roughly 16 million AR-15s or similar models in private hands in the United States today.

Here is that exchange:

.@BetoORourke on his gun confiscation plan: “Has to be consequences” for noncompliance; "in that case I think there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm" pic.twitter.com/U5PywOgw9D

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 16, 2019

National Review has more on Beto's MSNBC comments here including an exchange on CNN where  Alisyn Camerota called him out and reminded him that his plan would not affect mass shooters when they don't follow the law to start with.

Here is that exchange:


This continued talk of gun bans and gun confiscation is starting to have a positive impact on gun sales.