{"id":1140130,"date":"2019-09-24T16:00:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyreckoning.com\/?p=108029"},"modified":"2019-09-24T16:00:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T21:00:15","slug":"president-orourke-will-take-your-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1140130","title":{"rendered":"President(?!) O\u2019Rourke Will Take Your Guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post President(?!) O\u2019Rourke Will Take Your Guns<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dear Rich Lifer<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, I explained why Elizabeth Warren\u2019s plan for Social Security \u2013 while philosophically flawed \u2013 at least made more sense than Andrew Yang\u2019s \u201cfreedom dividend\u201d plan.<\/p>\n

But let me tell you, Beto O\u2019Rourke\u2019s plan to forcibly buy back all the AR-15 and AK-47 rifles in the United States takes the cake as the most outrageous proposal we\u2019ve heard from a Democratic candidate.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re pro-gun, anti-gun, or somewhere in between.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m highlighting this as another example of the way politicians will say anything to win the hearts and minds of various groups of Americans without any regard to facts or laws. (And yes, the same applies to Trump and most other elected officials as well.)<\/p>\n

There are several huge problems with O\u2019Rourke\u2019s promise.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with this whole idea of defining certain weapons as \u201cassault rifles,\u201d particularly the AR-15 currently sold to civilians in the United States.<\/p>\n

What is an Assault Rifle Technically?<\/h3>\n

An Assault Rifle, like an AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, which means it fires one round for every time you pull the trigger.<\/p>\n

So contrary to what a lot of people think, you can\u2019t just hold the trigger down and have it keep shooting round after round like the fully automatic version U.S. soldiers use.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it fires Remington .223 or 5.56 NATO ammunition, which is a far less powerful round than many others in common usage … including most common types used for deer hunting.<\/p>\n

Really, the idea of an \u201cassault rifle\u201d is completely made up and mostly relates to appearance \u2013 black or olive drab green plastic parts \u2013 and relatively superficial features like folding stocks or mounting rails.<\/p>\n

Many modern rifles \u2013 with plain-looking wooden stocks \u2013 fire the exact same types of ammunition, just as quickly, and in the same quantities as AR-15s. Indeed, they are functionally equivalent.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s put that nerdy stuff aside.<\/p>\n

There are much bigger legal and logistical hurdles to consider.<\/p>\n

District of Columbia v. Heller<\/h3>\n

The President of the United States simply doesn\u2019t have the authority to perform such an action without Congressional approval<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Getting that is a fairly big task in and of itself.<\/p>\n

And even with Congressional approval, it\u2019s very likely that such an action would be found unconstitutional based on past Supreme Court rulings such as District of Columbia v. Heller.<\/p>\n

That case, dating back to 2008, determined that the Second Amendment grants individual U.S. citizens the right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes \u2013 including self-defense inside their homes \u2013 without having to belong to any official militia.<\/p>\n

The specific case was about D.C.\u2019s handgun ban but the Heller ruling affirmed the idea that people have the right to own guns \u201cin common use at the time.\u201d With millions of AR-15s already in use by civilians, it\u2019s hard to see how a wholesale and involuntary buyback of those guns would be deemed constitutional based on the Heller ruling.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, even if all the legal issues were put aside, how exactly would the government make such a thing happen anyway?<\/p>\n

The Logistics are a Nightmare<\/h3>\n

There are somewhere between five and 20 million AR-15s alone in the U.S. though nobody really knows the exact number.<\/p>\n

How come we don\u2019t know? Because the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 prohibits any type of federal gun registry linking specific guns with specific owners.<\/p>\n

In other words, many AR-15s are not in any centralized computer database, and have changed hands without any official record of those transactions even in any individual state databases.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter what you think about this personally. It\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n

Neither O\u2019Rourke nor anyone else in the government can ever know how many existing AR-15s need to be confiscated or the names of the people who own them.<\/p>\n

By the way, how much would the government pay for each of those weapons as it bought them back? The typical AR-15 is currently worth $1,000 or more.<\/p>\n

One also wonders how O\u2019Rourke would handle noncompliance \u2026 because I\u2019m pretty sure you would have a lot of AR-15 owners who are unwilling to hand over their guns.<\/p>\n

As you can see, the list of potential issues with O\u2019Rourke\u2019s promise are absolutely massive and, in my mind, completely insurmountable.<\/p>\n

So whether you support the idea or absolutely abhor it \u2013 you might as well forget about it. It\u2019s simply not going to happen.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s Americans who are somewhere in the middle of the gun debate that should be most concerned \u2026<\/p>\n

Because in his attempt to grab headlines, O\u2019Rourke has only polarized people further, making it far more difficult for our country to have any type of reasonable<\/strong> dialog at all<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the real lesson in all of this, and it\u2019s an important one as we keep moving toward 2020 \u2026<\/p>\n

Whether they\u2019re from long-shot candidates like O\u2019Rourke or a sitting President, attention-seeking promises should always be countered with on-the-ground facts. Quickly.<\/p>\n

And as someone with a soapbox, a level head, and a penchant for research, I\u2019m happy<\/u> to take on that responsibility whenever I see a good opportunity.<\/p>\n

After all\u2026 bad information is one of the biggest<\/strong> blockades to living a rich life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To a richer life,<\/p>\n

\"Nilus<\/p>\n

Nilus Mattive<\/p>\n

The post President(?!) O\u2019Rourke Will Take Your Guns<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post President(?!) O’Rourke Will Take Your Guns<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Democratic field seems to be striving to outdo each other with their latest proposal, each more outrageous than the last. Last week, I broke down Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang’s proposals, Today, I’ll take on O’Rourke, and his gun control plan. <\/p>\n

The post President(?!) O’Rourke Will Take Your Guns<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3324,3252,3325,3326,3327,366,2453,3328,3329,3330,3331,3217,659,923,467],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140131,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140130\/revisions\/1140131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}