Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has an op-ed in today’s USA Today where he calls for the confiscation of “assault weapons” through a mandatory buyback program:
From @RepSwalwell: Ban assault weapons and buy them back. It might cost $15 billion, but we can afford it. Consider it an investment in our most important right, the right to live. https://t.co/7o2uuK1613
— USA TODAY Opinion (@usatodayopinion) May 3, 2018
Rep. Swalwell opens up the op-ed with this story about a crime he prosecuted from 2009 where a witness was gunned down the man he id’d in another crime:
Gary Jackson never stood a chance.
Gary was 28 and working as a security guard at a taco truck in Oakland, Calif., in 2009 when he saw Dreshawn Lee carrying a sawed-off shotgun and reported it to police. Three months later, Lee took his revenge by shooting and killing Jackson with an AK-47-style semiautomatic assault rifle.
I was the prosecutor who persuaded a jury to convict Lee and persuaded a judge to put him away for 65 years to life. But Gary’s autopsy report still haunts me.
Oddly, Rep. Swalwell doesn’t elaborate on why Dreshawn Lee was walking around free in the first place after he was just id’d carrying a sawed-off shotgun and all. To find that out, let’s go to a story on the trial from 2011, via the San Jose Mercury News:
But Lee was released from jail in October 2009 when prosecutors decided they did not have enough evidence to convict him and Lee immediately began plotting his revenge against Jackson, deputy district attorney Eric Swalwell said.
Ahh. Maybe we should ban bad prosecutors?
Anyway, here’s Rep. Swalwell’s confiscation proposal from the op-ed which calls for the total ban of “military-style semiautomatic assault weapons,” whatever that means:
Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.
Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.
Got that? BECAUSE prosecutors failed to put a thug in jail, now law-abiding gun owners should pay the price.
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