Investigative journalist James O'Keefe released his latest undercover video on Wednesday, in which a Defense Department official named Jason Beck detailed (among other things) his distaste for gun ownership and his belief that the Second Amendment should be repealed. Beck, who works as an Associate Director, Total Force Requirements & Sourcing Policy in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's office, went so far as to tell O'Keefe that the National Guard could be tasked with rounding up the 400 million or so firearms in the hands of American citizens. 

"I wonder if you would see a similar solution to like, school integration," Beck mused. "You know, where they did have to mobilize the National Guard."

"How many people in the National Guard, you know, maybe were personally opposed to integration, but still followed orders and made it happen," he continued. 

Look, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and Jason Beck has every right to believe that the Second Amendment should be repealed and all lawfully possessed guns should be rounded up... just like I have every right to believe that he's a moron with an authoritarian streak who should be roundly mocked for his suggestions. 

No one is stopping Beck or anyone else from launching a serious attempt to repeal the Second Amendment. The reason why gun control groups like Eveytown and Giffords have never called for that is twofold: they know it would fail and they understand it's easier for them to just pretend that the Second Amendment doesn't mean much to begin with. 

Beck was equally delusional when he brought up school integration and the National Guard. I don't know if he's aware of this, but the first instance of the National Guard being called out to a school that was integrating happened in 1957, when Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus mobilized the National Guard in Little Rock to prevent the integration of Central High. Two weeks after Faubus used the Guard to stand in the schoolhouse door President Dwight Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, brought in the 101st Airborne, and federalized the Arkansas National Guard to thwart Faubus's plans. 

What Beck wants to see is far more akin to what Faubus did than Eisenhower's decision; using the military to block the exercise of a fundamental right instead of ensuring that right can be exercised. Of course, that's right in line with the Massive Resistance to the Bruen decision we've seen from blue state governors like Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul, and Phil Murphy; who have defied the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen just like their fellow Democrats did in the deep South with Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s and 60s. 

It doesn't surprise me that a D.C. bureaucrat, even one who works in the Department of Defense, has such contempt for his fellow Americans that he thinks it would be a good idea to call up citizen soldiers and demand they carry out a mass confiscation of firearms. According to an October 2023 Gallup Poll, almost half of all Democrats nationwide support a ban on handguns, and I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Democrats in the D.C. area would be in favor of repealing the Second Amendment. 

O'Keefe's latest undercover investigation may not be all that shocking but it's still a timely reminder of the disdain that's endemic on the left when it comes to our right to keep and bear arms, not to mention the dystopian fantasies they have of disarming tens of millions of American citizens. Not by themselves, of course. They'd task others with doing their dirty work for them. Beck might have revealed himself to be an idiot when it comes to mass gun confiscation, but based on the video he's smart enough not to want to be the one knocking on the door of a home and demanding the residents inside hand over their firearms.