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I tweeted a little mockery of this last night, but it's an attitude that I see often enough that it maybe deserves a slightly more substantive response.
Beto's not proposing going house to house disarming gun owners. Hell, he's not even proposing jailing people who keep their assault rifles after they're banned. What is he proposing?
Offering people money for their banned assault rifles, and fining them if the rifles are discovered after the buyback period. That's it. A monetary incentive to turn in your AR, the threat of a fine if you don't.
Tracey says it's "insane" to imagine you could do this without widespread civil unrest—without provoking an "end to the American republic"—but that's of course baloney.
If Beto's plan was implemented, a bunch of people would turn in their weapons. The overwhelming majority of those who didn't would just ... NOT turn in their weapons. That's it. That's all they'd have to do to keep them. Just not turn them in, and not show them off.
The risk of violence, even organized violence, in the wake of the passage of such a law is real. But the idea that it would, on its own, would lead inevitably to the fall of the government is preposterous. It's a Turner Diaries fantasy.
A lot of people are imagining house-to-house searches for banned weapons. But Beto's not proposing that, and it'd be a violation of the Fourth Amendment if he did. (He's not going to.) He's proposing fines. If the guns are discovered. That's it.
And for those asking what the government would do if you didn't pay your fine? Same thing they do if you don't pay a parking ticket, or your taxes, or any other financial obligation to the government. The concept of "fines" isn't exactly wild uncharted territory.
And I'm not arguing the merits of Beto's plan here—that's not the point of this thread. Like it or hate it, whatever. I've got no horse in that race. All I'm saying is that treating it as a step toward apocalyptic societal collapse is silly.
The threat of an increase in right-wing political violence in the next few years is very real. We should be worried about that, and working to prevent it. But Beto's gun plan isn't why we should be worried, and the scale of some of the catastrophizing about it is off the charts.
