Joe Biden’s pick for White House deputy chief of staff Jennifer O’Malley Dillon pushed for “mandatory buybacks” of some rifles in her previous role as manager of former Democrat presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.
Several weeks after the former Texas congressman said in September 2019, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” O’Malley Dillon vocally supported O’Rourke’s calls for gun confiscation, promoting the campaign’s goal for an “assault weapon” ban and mandatory buybacks.
In a video posted to O’Rourke’s YouTube channel in October 2019, O’Malley Dillon said, “We are actually the only campaign with a plan … that supports mandatory buybacks of weapons of war,” she says in the video. “An assault weapon ban is very, very important, and we need to have it. But that only takes weapons of war off the streets in the future. It does nothing for weapons of war that are currently out there.”
O’Malley Dillon guessed the mandatory buyback would impact “15 or 16 million” firearms.
O’Rourke’s plan is similar to that of Joe Biden’s.
On the Biden-Harris official website, the campaign explained the “Biden plan to end our gun violence epidemic” includes banning the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, regulate possession of existing assault weapons and buy back assault weapons that Americans already own.
“Buy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities. Biden will also institute a program to buy back weapons of war currently on our streets. This will give individuals who now possess assault weapons or high-capacity magazines two options: sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act,” the website stated.
The Biden-Harris campaign also called for a reduction in stockpiling weapons, implemented through legislation restricting the number of firearms an American may purchase to one per month.
Kamala Harris also supported mandatory buybacks of “assault weapons” throughout her campaign for president, but she estimated just 2 million firearms would be impacted, Fox News reported.
Second Amendment groups and police organizations have criticized the mandatory buy-back suggestion. Former presidential candidate and Democrat senator Bernie Sanders even called the idea “unconstitutional.”
In August, the National Rifle Association took to Twitter to express their concerns about American’s Second Amendment rights under a Biden administration, tweeting, “If Joe Biden wins, he will destroy our Second Amendment, and America will become unrecognizable.”
If Joe Biden wins, he will destroy our Second Amendment, and America will become unrecognizable.
— NRA (@NRA) August 29, 2020
The NRA also tweeted a video of an interview between CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Joe Biden.
During the interview, when asked about gun owners’ concerns that Biden is “going to come for my guns,” the presidential candidate responded, “Bingo. You’re right if you have an assault weapon. The fact of the matter is they should be illegal. Period.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both voiced support for a government-mandated buyback (code for CONFISCATION) of AR-15s and other commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles. pic.twitter.com/A2poOVVd7C
— NRA (@NRA) August 29, 2020
