Firearms Background Check Run On Beto & Our Federal Government Results in FAIL

Opinion

Fayetteville, AR – -(AmmoLand.com)- In a discussion that I was a part of over the weekend on Beto O’Rourke’s belief that he will be someday able to require law-abiding owners of “assault weapons” to sell them to the government—often erroneously called a buyback—the point was raised that O’Rourke’s criminal record would prevent him from possessing firearms.

He was arrested on two separate occasions. One charge was declined by the prosecutor, while the other, a DWI arrest, was dismissed. O’Rourke was sent to a “misdemeanor diversion program,” which his record shows he completed. The alcohol-related charge against him means that if he wishes to own a firearm legally in Texas, he’ll need to ask the state to review the case.

But, of course, O’Rourke’s proposal doesn’t involve selling guns that he finds icky to him. Instead, the government would be the mandated purchaser. According to gun control advocates, every transfer of a firearm must be done with a background check, and in the interests of consistency, I will run just such a check on the would-be buyer, our Government, here.

Background Check On The Government

Our government spent decades illegally spying on the civil rights movement in an effort to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” people who were working to expand the exercise of rights in this country. In this century, our government has imposed a massive spying program on all Americans, as well as creating lists of people who are accused of being terrorists without taking the trouble to verify the claim.

Our government felt entitled to remove the elected leader of Iran in 1953, putting its faith in a dictatorial monarch, an act that resulted in a quarter-century of repression and ultimately brought us a regime that has killed thousands, including many Americans, around the world. And the meddling perpetrated by our government for over a hundred years in Central America has destabilized many countries, installed petty tyrants, and produced the immigration crisis that is our national attempt at dodging responsibility. And lest the enormity of the deed makes us forget, our government committed genocide against the peoples who lived here first.

Our government lied about an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to get us fully into a war that cost us almost 60,000 lives and lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and about that country’s supposed involvement in the 9/11 attacks, resulting in over 8,000 deaths of U.S. military and contractor personnel.

And if all these offenses are not enough, note that buyback is not the appropriate term here, since as readers of this site will understand, we gun owners didn’t buy our guns from the government—purchasers of surplus weapons excepted. The usage of “buyback” appears to be to create the impression that what is happening is a safety recall, not a mandate for confiscation. A buyback would be a return of the firearm to the original seller, and if the government receives a gun from me in a buyback without delivering it to the actual source, that would make the government a straw purchaser if we take the legal language literally.

The bottom line here is that the government cannot pass my background check. As a result, I am unable to sell any guns to the government. Please pound salt.

About Greg Camp

Greg Camp has taught English composition and literature since 1998 and is the author of six books, including a western, The Willing Spirit, and Each One, Teach One, with Ranjit Singh on gun politics in America. His books can be found on Amazon. He tweets @gregcampnc.