Why ‘Mandatory Buybacks’ Are A Non-Starter

By Tom Knighton

Right now, there’s a lot of talk about mandatory buybacks. It’s being mentioned more often than the primary champion for them, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke. The idea is alluring for a lot of anti-gun voters, the idea of not just banning so-called assault rifles, but also taking those already in circulation off the streets. And hey, since there’s a buyback, that’s totally different than just taking the guns away, right? Right?

Well, no, actually. It’s just a slightly more polite version of the same mentality that would have jackbooted thugs kicking in people’s doors to search for guns and hauling people off to prison. Doing so, even with a mandatory buyback, is likely to spark trouble.

There is an upside, though. That upside is that no such thing is likely to happen.

Why?

Because lawmakers know damn good and well that even if violence wasn’t a potential issue, noncompliance is.

Before we go any further with the back-and-forth about armed resistance, let’s think about the reaction we can realistically expect to a watered-down AR-15 ban, with no mandatory buyback. How many gun owners would either hand over or destroy their assault weapons? And how many of the authorities whose …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms