Beto Uses Kent State Shooting To Shame Gun Owners, Doesn't Mention Who Was Behind It
Former Texas congressman Robert “Beto” O’Rourke used the 1970 Kent State shooting to shame gun owners who showed up to his rally, but failed to mention that government employees were the ones pulling the trigger.
At a Wednesday rally at Kent State University in Ohio, the 220 Democratic presidential candidate called out gun owners who attended his event carrying so-called “assault rifles,” accusing them of trying to “intimidate” him and his supporters.
“Yesterday, people brought assault weapons to our rally at Kent State—where 4 students were shot dead in 1970,” O’Rourke tweeted Thursday.
“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.”
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
But O’Rourke failed to mention some very important facts about the Kent State shooting.
For one thing, there was no crazed gunman mowing down his fellow classmates. Those who died in the 1970 shooting were killed by the Ohio National Guard.
The government troops left four students dead and many more wounded, according to History.com.
According to O’Rourke, these are the only people that should be armed with “weapons of war,” since law-abiding American citizens are apparently too untrustworthy.
To bring about his plan to strip citizens of their firearms, he advocates for a so-called “mandatory buyback.” This, of course, amounts to a confiscation of weapons, as the government cannot buy back something it never owned in the first place.
It’s neither. Government can’t “buy back” anything it didn’t own in the first place.
And they’d do it with tax money, literally giving gun owners their own money. So neither “buy” nor “back” is accurate. It’s Orwellian Newspeak, intended to hide truth rather than convey it.
— The Upper Cut (@georgeupper) September 26, 2019
If O’Rourke is still desperate enough to use the Kent State tragedy as an attack against gun owners, there’s one more detail he’s leaving out.
The weapons fired that day were not anything close to what Democrats now call “assault rifles.”
The firearms used by the National Guard were M-1 military-issue rifles, according to History.com, not AR-15s.
O’Rourke is becoming increasingly desperate by the day, and turning to baseless attacks against gun owners to whip up more support from his leftist base.
Thankfully he’s still lagging behind his competitors in the polls, and it doesn’t look like his anti-gun shtick is attracting many new followers.
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