Eric 'Duke Nukem' Swalwell Vows to Send Recalcitrant Gun Owners to Prison

Rep. Eric "Duke Nukem" Swalwell took his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to Jake Tapper's "State of the Union" on CNN last weekend and revealed his plan for jailing potentially millions of Americans.

TAPPER: So, gun control is the central plank in your campaign. You wrote last year: "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."

Criminal prosecution for keeping assault weapons. What's the punishment for people who don't hand in their guns? Do they go to jail?

SWALWELL: Well, Jake, they would, but I also offer an alternative, which would be to keep them at a hunting club or a shooting range.

And the reason I have proposed this is because these weapons are so devastating. I have seen this as a prosecutor in the cases that I have prosecuted. We have seen these in the school shootings, from Sandy Hook to Parkland...

But it's not just the violence that they have caused. It's the fear, the immeasurable fear, that our children live in, because they are still on our streets. I want to get rid of that fear. I want to do what Australia did and New Zealand just recently did. I think this issue just needs some bold leadership to do it.

Bold leadership and completely ignoring the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

There are at least 15 million AR- and AK-pattern semi-automatic rifles in private hands in this country. These weapons instill fear only because Duke Nukem and his ilk have demonized them for decades. You can bet that a significant number of those gun owners would take a "Molon Labe" stand.

Additionally, if the opposition of certain law enforcement officials to "red flag gun laws," which assume gun owners guilty until proven innocent, are any indication, then you can bet that an effort to declare commonly used firearms as verboten would elicit a similar refusal to enforce the law.

Tapper, who previously worked for Handgun Control, Inc., then pointed out one of the inconvenient facts about the continual efforts to ban scary black rifles: They are used in a vanishingly small number of murders in this country.

TAPPER: I know you know this, but the vast majority of gun-related deaths in this country are not related to these semiautomatic assault weapons — whatever you want to call them — and the vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens who have purchased these weapons legally and use them safely.

One of the most frequent attacks on this issue from President Trump and the Republicans is that Democrats want to take away your guns. But isn't it fair to say you actually do want to take away people's guns?

SWALWELL: You know, keep your pistols, keep your long rifles, keep your shotguns. I want the most dangerous weapons, these weapons of war, out of the hands of the most dangerous people.

First, as we have pointed out repeatedly, the semi-automatic only AR- and AK-pattern rifles that Duke Nukem wants to ban are not "weapons of war." There is not a single military on the face of the planet that equips their soldiers with firearms that are semi-automatic (excepting some specialty troops like snipers who may use bolt-action rifles).

Swalwell also lies about keeping these arms out of the "hands of the most dangerous people." The law(s) he wants passed don't apply solely to "dangerous people." They apply to everyone. We already have plenty of laws designed to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people—we just don't have a lot of public officials interested in enforcing them until after a tragedy occurs.