Do you have a semi-automatic gun? That’s a gun that fires one bullet for every one trigger pull. Most handguns and rifles are semi-automatic. Well, if you have one, then there’s a Democrat planning to confiscate it. And if you don’t want to give it up, then he says that he would use nuclear weapons to destroy you.

NBC News reports:

A Democratic congressman has proposed outlawing [semi-automatic guns] and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution, a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms.

[…]Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons — and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”

In the past, Democrats and gun safety groups have carefully resisted proposals that could be interpreted as “gun confiscation,” a concept gun rights groups have often invoked as part of a slippery slope argument against more modest proposals like universal background checks.

Swalwell addressed these arguments directly, saying he and other Democrats had been too deferential to Second Amendment activists and should follow the lead of teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting who have been more strident.

The Washington Times reported on Swalwell’s plan to deal with those who refuse to disarm themselves:

Rep. Eric Swalwell, California Democrat, warned gun owners Friday that any fight over firearms would be “a short one,” because the federal government has an extensive cache of nuclear weapons.

After Joe Biggs tweeted that Mr. Swalwell “wants a war” over the Second Amendment, Mr. Swalwell responded, “And it would be a short war my friend.”

“The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit,” the congressman tweeted. “I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.”

People who purchase  firearms legally are among the most law-abiding people in the country. Make no mistake. This Democrat lawmaker isn’t threatening to take guns away from criminals. He is proposing to confiscate the guns of law-abiding Americans, who simply want to defend their families and their property from criminals.

It’s very interesting to think about all the law-abiding gun owners in states like Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, etc. who voted for Democrat senators in the 2018 mid-terms, isn’t it? What were they thinking, when they elected Democrats? Or maybe they weren’t thinking at all. When elections are happening, it’s important to look at the records of the candidates, not what they say in ads and at campaign events.

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

I think that peer-reviewed studies should be useful for assessing gun control vs gun rights policy. The book by economist John Lott, linked above,compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, which shows that the 1997 UK gun ban caused violent crime rates to MORE THAN DOUBLE in the four years following the ban. But both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.

One of the common mistakes I see anti-gun advocates making is to use the metric of all “gun-related deaths”. First of all, this completely ignores the effects of hand gun ownership on violent crime, as we’ve seen. Take away the guns from law-abiding people and violent crime skyrockets. But using the “gun-related deaths” number is especially wrong, because it includes suicides committed with guns. This is the majority (about two thirds) of gun related deaths, even in a country like America that has a massive inner-city gun violence problem caused by the epidemic of single motherhood by choice. If you take out the gun-related SUICIDES, then the actual number of gun homicides has decreased as gun ownership has grown.

For a couple of useful graphs related to this point, check out this post over at the American Enterprise Institute.