The Patriot Post® · Beto, Kent State, and Why We Have a Second Amendment

There are some venues you simply ought to avoid when talking about certain subjects. Beto O'Rourke found one such venue when reiterating his call for gun confiscation: Kent State University. Reason’s Eric Bohm nails it, writing:

Kent State is, of course, the location of the infamous 1970 shooting that left four students dead and nine others injured. The shots were fired not by private citizens but by members of the Ohio National Guard, who shot at a crowd protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

Invoking armed agents of the state gunning down unarmed civilians is an interesting way to argue that Americans would be better off if the government forcefully disarmed private citizens. But hey, I guess that’s why we keep being told Beto’s an “unconventional” candidate.

The Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams adds, “If you are going to advocate for the forcible confiscation of an estimated 16 million rifles from lawful American citizens, it is probably best not to do it against the backdrop of one of the most famous incidents of unarmed citizens being shot to death by government forces.”

Obviously, O'Rourke’s proposal, if it involved actual door-to-door confiscation as it would need to for effectiveness, would be deadly. But ironically, that fact and Beto’s carelessness serve to highlight the most fundamental point of all when it comes to the Second Amendment: The Founders didn’t write it to protect hunting, and it’s not even primarily about defending yourself against criminals. The Second Amendment is meant as a bulwark against government tyranny.

Democrats know that in order to truly carry out their tyrannical ideas of “social justice,” they must first confiscate the firearms of American citizens. But the British found out at Lexington and Concord — and all the way to Yorktown — that Americans value our God-given Liberty far too much to succumb to confiscation, dressed up though it may be as “buybacks.”