Throw Gun Owners in Jail? Cory Booker Says He Supports it.

With Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) unlikely to get much traction in his bid for the presidency, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has decided to take it upon himself to turn gun control into his Big Issue for 2020. As such, he rolled out some startling propositions this week, including banning “assault weapons” and starting up a national gun registry.

Most of Booker’s gun control ideas are bad, and the ban on semiautomatic “assault weapons” is indeed a terrible one, but his proposal to make all gun owners be licensed and registered is downright frightening. Especially since the New Jersey senator made it clear on Monday that he will not hesitate to throw gun owners in prison.

In an interview with CNN, Booker was asked: “Senator Booker, before you go, one final question on your gun proposal since you just released it this morning: Your competitor in the 2020 race, Congressman Eric Swalwell has also, like you, proposed an assault weapons ban. He’s proposing a buyback program where Americans who currently have those guns could sell them essentially to the government, but if they don’t, within a certain period of time, they would be prosecuted – thrown in jail, perhaps. Are you supportive of the same?”

Nuked, even.

“We should have a law that bans these weapons, and we should have a reasonable period in which people can turn in these weapons,” Booker replied. “Right now we have a nation that allows in streets and communities like mine these weapons that should not exist.”

After a “reasonable period” during which owners of AR-15 type guns would be allowed to comply, Booker said, he was agreeable to jail time for those that did not.

“This critical thing is, I think most Americans agree, that these weapons of war should not be on our streets,” he said.

Make no mistake about it – a gun registry mixed with a leader who is willing to start throwing firearms owners in prison = a fantastic recipe for tyranny. To say that Booker’s proposals are incompatible with the Second Amendment understate the degree to which this kind of talk is dangerous to our republic. One need only look at the plight of the Venezuelan opposition to see what happens when a population allows the government to disarm them. And with the siren call of socialism growing louder in Washington every day, we must insist more strongly than ever that our right to bear arms be upheld.