Beto Unwisely Picks Kent State University as the Place to Argue That Only the Government Should Have Guns

Despite his 15 minutes of fame in the media spotlight, Robert Francis O’Rourke is sinking into oblivion in the polls and much of the reason is his own fault.

Democrats first began to distance themselves when he admitted what a Democrat president would do to the Second Amendment. During a recent Democrat presidential debate, “Beto” gave conservatives a gold-plated sound bite when he passionately declared, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15’s, your AK-47’s.”

As though 2.5% in the polls wasn’t low enough, O’Rourke picked Kent State University as the venue to argue only the government should have guns. Dan Zimmerman of The Truth About Guns observed, “It must have escaped Beto that Kent State is where four unarmed Vietnam War protesters were killed and nine more wounded when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on them almost 50 years ago. That’s the venue O’Rourke chose to argue that Americans need to be disarmed and only the government should have ‘weapons of war.’”

Though his advisors are probably telling Beto it’s time to do some damage control, history shows he’s likely to ignore them and plunge even deeper into the well of political obscurity.

After polls showed his “take your guns” speech backfired, Beto let his shrinking group of supporters in Charlottesville, Virginia know he wasn’t through with his diatribe. There, he said, “Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government.”

But Beto wasn’t finished. He backed up that remark with another equally ridiculous one. He equated legal gun owners with white supremacists who attacked synagogues, churches, mosques, and Walmarts.

Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia bucked his party by telling reporters, “I can tell you one thing: Beto O’Rourke’s not taking my guns away from me.”

As with his comments about taking away guns from law-abiding citizens, Beto doesn’t seem to see the mistake he made in choosing Kent State as the place to declare civilians should not have guns at all. After his speech he tweeted:

Yesterday, people brought assault weapons to our rally at Kent State—where 4 students were shot dead in 1970.

I told them nobody should show up with an AK-47 or an AR-15 to seek to intimidate us in our own democracy.

We need to buy back every single one of them. pic.twitter.com/U7N5fWUlvv

— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 26, 2019

He’s not too young to remember it so perhaps Beto wasn’t listening in history class when his teacher told the class about May 4, 1970. It was on that day when a group of young protestors clustered around a wounded comrade as Ohio National Guardsmen, wearing gas masks injured nine and killed four students during a protest against the Vietnam War.

Almost 50 years ago in Kent, Ohio, it wasn’t civilians who opened fire on the government. It was the government that did the killing.

When several protestors showed up at Kent State bearing legally owned rifles, he scolded the protestors saying, “It is not enough to stop selling AR-15s and AK-47s when there are more than 10 million of those potential instruments of terror.”

He went on to add, “We must mandate that every single one of them be bought back — back home, off the streets, out of our lives. No longer a threat to every to every single one of us.”

Sorry Beto, but your made gun rights advocates point for them. It wasn’t some deranged citizen who killed those students in 1970. It was agents of the state that killed those students.

If Democrats pass any gun control measures that mirror O’Rourke’s message, it’s virtually assured there will be more Kent States. Gun laws like those championed by Cori Booker, O’Rourke and others will take guns out of the hands of criminals, the only people who would lose their guns are law-abiding citizens.

Despite his emotional description of high-velocity rounds designed to “shred everything in your body, Beto must know that’s not really the issue. What he described in that scenario was weapons used by soldiers. But remember, it was at Kent State a Governor and the U.S. government responded with military might intended for the defense of this country against foreign intruders.