Julian Castro Opposes Gun Confiscation From Leftist Perspective

The left and the right in America have very different views of most things. I suppose this is to be expected considering the fundamental disagreements between the two sides as well as the differences that lie somewhere between the two extreme ends of the spectrum.

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Take someone like Julian Castro. He’s not a gun guy. He supports things like gun registration and still more licensing requirements for firearms vendors. He’s not a fan of the Second Amendment. That’s clear as day.

Yet he offered an argument against Beto O’Rourke’s mandatory gun buyback rhetoric that I found kind of interesting.

Former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro offered some powerful pushback to other Democrats’ plans to implement a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons at tonight’s debate, emphasizing the police power that would be required to make that a reality.

Earlier in the night, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D–Texas) equivocated when asked how he would enforce his mandatory gun buyback proposal while also sticking to his promise that he would not have the police go door-to-door.

Castro, to his credit, pointed out that this is impossible, and that any confiscation efforts would fall hardest on those people who already bear the brunt of police enforcement of so many other laws. “I am not going to give these police officers an excuse to go door to door in these communities,” said Castro.

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Now, when one considers how the left tends to view law enforcement, a fact made even worse by the shooting of a woman inside of her own home in Forth Worth, TX, why would they want to have the police in a position to go door-to-door?

Remember, the rhetoric has been that police are racist, that they’re supposedly looking for excuses to gun down minorities.

If you honestly believe that, then why on Earth would you want the police to go from house to house in minority neighborhoods looking for guns? It would be a recipe for disaster.

The fact that Castro is the only Democratic candidate to point out this concern is interesting. One would think that at least one of the other candidates would have made that leap, espoused an understanding that demanding people be disarmed would somehow blowback on minorities at the end of the day, but they didn’t.

You can’t even really explain it away with the idea that since Castro is a minority, he’d get it. Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker are too, after all. So was Elizabeth Warren until she was blasted following her DNA test.

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One would think at least one of them might have had that thought as well, but nope.

Now, I’m not about to say that Castro is good on guns. As noted previously, he’s horrible when it comes to the Second Amendment. His opposition to door-to-door searches has nothing to do with defending the right to keep and bear arms. If he could find a way to make it so the guns just disappeared, he’d do it and we all know it.

He just can’t.

However, his argument is still an interesting one when you consider the political climate right about now. Issues don’t exist in a vacuum, and Castro’s comments illustrate that quite well. It’ll be interesting to see if mandatory buybacks and other confiscation comments start getting some pushback after this.

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Bearing Arms Staff 10:45 AM | November 04, 2024