After a growing number of Democrats in recent days have criticized Beto O’Rourke’s gun confiscation plan as unhelpful and unrealistic, President Trump took his turn at the Twitter microphone this morning and delivered some inconvenient truths of his own to the struggling presidential candidate and his party.
Here’s what the President tweeted:
Dummy Beto made it much harder to make a deal. Convinced many that Dems just want to take your guns away. Will continue forward! https://t.co/87jvaYUkyn
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2019
Trump was responding to remarks O’Rourke made at last Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate where he said “Hell yes” in response to ABC News debate moderator David Muir’s question about whether or not he was going to take away people’s guns if elected president:
MUIR: Some of the stage have suggested a voluntary buy-back for guns in this country. You have gone further. You said, quote, “Americans who own AR-15s and AK-47s will have to sell them to the government, all of them. You know that critics call this confiscation. Are you proposing taking away their guns and how would this work?
BETO O’ROURKE: I am, if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield. If the high impact, high velocity, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers. When we see that being used against children and in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15 and that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.
As of this writing “Dummy Beto” is still trending on Twitter:
"Dummy Beto" trends on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/HpZrya3FuA
— Sister Toldjah 😁 (@sistertoldjah) September 18, 2019
The failed Senate candidate replied by doubling down on his call to “buy back” all “assault weapons”, and accusing Trump of “cowardice”:
To be clear: We will buy back every single assault weapon.
We‘ll also license every gun & do a background check on every buyer. That’s what the American people want—and deserve.
The only thing stopping us from ending this epidemic is you & your cowardice. Do the right thing. https://t.co/lPqAv1r9ij
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 18, 2019
Beto can say Trump is a “coward” on this issue all day long but it doesn’t change the fact that Trump is right.
What Beto declared at the debate confirms the worst fears of gun rights groups and other 2nd Amendment defenders who have warned for years that Democratic efforts at gun control were part of a “step-by-step process” to eventually take away guns. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) explained this well on Thursday when asked about universal background checks:
“When you really understand what the endgame of the left is, it’s literally mandatory buybacks or as I call it: confiscation. This is a step-by-step process for them,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Hill Thursday when asked about the debate over expanded background checks for firearms sales.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), who has been working with Republican Senators on a compromise bill, said last Friday on CNN that O’Rourke’s statement at the debate “will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying Democrats are coming for your guns.”
To make matters worse for Democrats, O’Rourke is not the only presidential candidate calling for mandatory gun confiscation. Sens. Kamala Harris (CA) and Cory Booker (NJ), whose campaigns are going nowhere but who have nevertheless both been floated as vice presidential possibilities, have endorsed his plan.
If Beto was a wise man he would have never jumped on board the gun grabbing train and instead offered up some constitutionally sound common sense solutions that most Americans (including his fellow Texans) could get behind. But after the horrific El Paso mass shooting, he has been operating solely on emotion and anger on this issue, which is precisely why he belongs nowhere near the White House.
Because as I’ve written before, no matter how passionate, emotional, and personal an issue may be to a candidate, an unconstitutional plan is still unconstitutional.
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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –
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