I watched the third Democratic Presidential Debate hosted by ABC News on Thursday night. In the almost three-hour-long debate, there were two moments that I found to be disturbing. The debate was full of pie-in-the-sky, economically and constitutionally-challenged policies and ideas discussed, so the fact only two moments stood out to me is rather remarkable.
Both instances was during the discussion on gun control and both demonstrate that at least two of the candidates believe the President’s role is to be tyrant-in-chief.
First, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke doubled down on his promise to confiscate any weapon he believes Americans should not have. One of the moderators asked if he plans to take away certain guns from Americans.
“I am if it is a weapon designed to kill people on a battlefield. If the high-impact, high-velocity round if 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, not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers… When we see that being used against children… 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 the other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there were not enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47, we are not going to allow it to be used against your fellow Americans anymore,” O’Rourke argued.
The 2nd Amendment and the Constitution be damned, O’Rourke wants to make an emotional appeal to grab guns he believes are designed for battlefields. Granted, when I was in the Army, I carried an M-16 which is fully automatic, not an AR-15. Also, what O’Rourke doesn’t mention is that many hunting rifles are more powerful than an AR-15.
Also, he wants to grab guns from law-abiding citizens when the shooter in Odessa used an AR-15 that was illegally purchased.
Does he think criminals will submit to this? How does he plan to enforce this?
Down the barrel of a gun, that would be the only way.
Not to be outdone by O’Rourke, Kamala Harris responded to criticism by Vice President Joe Biden who pointed out her idea to ban assault weapons by executive order would be unconstitutional.
Kudos to him for pointing that out, and boos to her for doubling down on the idea.
“I mean I would say hey Joe. Instead of saying we can’t, let’s say, yes we can.” Harris said while laughing. “
Biden replied, “It’s got to be constitutional. It’s got to be constitutional.”
“Yes we can. Because I will tell you something, the way that I think about this is, I’ve seen more autopsy photographs than I care to tell you. I have attended more police officer funerals than I care to tell you. I have hugged more mothers of homicide victims than I care to tell you,” Harris replied.
“The idea that we would wait for this Congress which has just done nothing to act it is overlooking the fact that every day in America our babies are going to school to have drills – elementary, middle, and high school students – where they are learning about how they have to hide in a closet or crouch in a corner if there is a masked shooter roaming the hallways of their school,” she added.
She laughs at Biden’s comment that this executive order would be unconstitutional and then proceeded to provide no legal defense of how it would be constitutional instead, like O’Rourke, made an emotional appeal.
This is not how public policy works. Their comments are frightening, and what is even more frightening is the cheers both received for what they had to say.