First, let's shoot all the gun owners

How many Americans is Beto (and the other Dems who privately agree with him) willing to kill to take away our AR-15s?

Both Left and Right agree that there will be active, armed resistance to confiscation. So how many otherwise innocent, law-abiding Americans must be shot to death by law enforcement to make our country safe from gun violence? I would like him to state an actual number. But of course, the only honest answer he can give is, "As many as it takes."

For that matter, how many law-enforcement officers is Beto willing to sacrifice to complete the confiscation? I am sure federal, state, and local officers would like to know just how expendable they are.

It's worth remembering that when Beto was running for a Texas US Senate seat, he was asked directly by an on-air interviewer,  "I own an AR-15. A lot of our listeners out there own AR-15s. Why should they not have one?" O'Rourke responded:

"To be clear, they should have them. If you purchased that AR-15, if you own it, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly." And later on, he said, "If you own a gun, keep that gun. Nobody wants to take it away from you — at least I don’t want to do that.”

What changed? Nothing except the political winds. But as CNN observed, "Beto O'Rourke just did Republicans a massive favor on guns," for from from now until November 2020, whenever a Democrat says, "We are not coming for your guns," all gun owners know there is no reason at all to believe them. (And CNN is also extremely skeptical that the confiscation Beto urges would be possible at all.)

But my question remains: How many Americans is Beto willing to see killed to get his way? 

Related: 

Reason: The "assault weapons" that the presidential contender wants to confiscate are not especially deadly, but the symbolism of that policy is poisonous.

Also Reason: There is in fact no such thing as an "assault rifle."  In 1993, when the first "assault rifle" ban was being debated in Congress, I was a major in the US Army, serving on the Army staff at the Pentagon. I had never heard the term "assault rifle" before so I went to the Pentagon library and looked it up in the DOD official dictionary of military terms.

It was not there. The US military has never characterized any of its firearms as "assault" weapons. It is a political term, not a military one, and literally means nothing except, "looks scary." None of the characteristics that politicians think make a rifle an "assault" rifle make it deadlier or increase its rate of fire. See here:


Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here's What the Data Say

According to a New York Times analysis, since 2007, at least “173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s.”

That’s 173 over a span of a decade, with an average of 17 homicides per year. To put this in perspective, consider that at this rate it would take almost one-hundred years of mass shootings with AR-15s to produce the same number of homicide victims that knives and sharp objects produce in one year.

With an average of 13,657 homicides per year during the 2007-2017 timeframe, about one-tenth of one percent of homicides were produced by mass shootings involving AR-15s.

But the facts are irrelevant to Beto and the rest of the Left. They do not argue from facts but from anger -- anger that untold numbers of Americans are doing things or owning things that they do not like.