When a gun grabber starts talking about bans, most know they need to be careful. You can pass something like the Assault Weapon Ban of 1994 and be OK, but you don’t want to go much further. You definitely don’t want to tell Americans they can’t have guns they already purchased, that they have to turn them in. That’s a gun confiscation, and that’s never a lot of fun.

But they all don’t. Take anti-gun zealot Rep. Eric Swalwell.

You see, Swalwell is trying to use a bit of rhetorical slight-of-hand to hide his confiscation desires. This was on display when Tucker Carlson took him to town recently.

Townhall‘s Beth Baumann transcribed the takedown, and it pointed out just how disingenuous Swalwell is being.

Tucker quoted that part of Swalwell’s OpEd and asked him, point blank, if he was calling for gun confiscation. In typical liberal fashion, Swalwell said it wasn’t gun confiscation.

Carlson: So you’ve talked about Russia but you’ve also become known for your position on guns and you’re one of the very few Democrats I think who’s been honest about that. You say that the U.S. government ought to ban a certain species of rifles. You wrote a piece about this. It’s not a secret view you have. You wrote it in USA Today. And you say this: ‘…we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons. We should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons.’ So we should confiscate this entire class of firearms? What do you think would happen if the federal government tried to do that?

Swalwell: Well, Tucker, did you read the OpEd?

Carlson: I did. I just quoted from it extensively.

Swalwell: I’m not calling for a confiscation. What I’m saying is we should invest in buyback, that we should restrict any weapons that aren’t bought back to gun clubs, hunting clubs, shooting ranges. Keep them there, where it’s safe. Not on our streets. And if you were caught, just like you were caught, you know, with drugs, or anything else, or they have probable cause to go in your home and you have one of these weapons, yeah. You’d be prosecuted. I’ve never suggested sending troops out and collecting and confiscating–

Carlson: Okay, I’m going to quote an old friend of mine called Eric Swalwell. He’s a Congressman from California, on the intel committee—

Swalwell: Yeah, he’s a good guy.

Carlson: Put it back on the screen for me. I’m just going to quote once again. ‘And we should buy back those weapons.’ And I’m quoting, ‘we should criminally prosecute all — criminally prosecute any who refuse — choose to defy it by keeping their weapons.’ So, you’re going to prosecute people who don’t give up their weapons. That’s gun confiscation.

Swalwell: If they’re caught with them, yeah.

Sounds like gun confiscation to me.

But Swalwell does understand that he can’t use that phrase. That particular term is loaded all to hell and back in this country. It’s something many people have vowed to go to war over, after all.

So he tried to pretend that it’s not a gun confiscation. He uses phrases like “buy back” to mask the reality that it’s a case of either give up the guns or become a felon.

What he’s doing is hiding behind what he thinks of as a nuance. He’s not actually calling for troops to go door to door and search of people’s guns, so he feels like he’s not actually talking about confiscation. Alright, maybe he doesn’t actually feel that way. Maybe he knows what he’s saying and is hoping the American people are too stupid to understand it. He’s a politician. It could go either way.

But his rhetorical attempts at trickery don’t change the reality. “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in” is only better than jackboots knocking on your door at three in the morning, demanding entry so they can take away all your firearms when it comes to convenience. It’s still an abridgment of our liberties.

Swalwell can pretend he’s not talking about confiscation all he wants, but he’s either a liar or an idiot and we can all see it.