I appreciate her approach here, slipping a comprehensive draconian measure into a list of much more limited regulations. She should have done that with the Green New Deal too. “To fight climate change, we should (1) increase tax credits for renewable energy sources, (2) aggressively tighten emissions standards for all vehicles, (3) spend $93 trillion to remake the United States on a socialist model, (4)…”

You know, instead of training children, teachers, houses of faith, & concertgoers to prep for being shot, we could just:

-Pass Universal Background checks (#HR8!)
-Disarm domestic abusers
-Mandate safe storage
-Ban bump stocks, semiautos, & high cap mags designed to kill people https://t.co/5SaLxEfYBT

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 22, 2019

Bump stocks have already been banned although only by regulation rather than by statute, which I assume is what she means. As for her reference to “semiautos,” I think my pal Karl was exactly right: “[S]he likely doesn’t know what she’s saying, but would be for banning them even if she did.” In fairness to her, she might know what she’s saying. She tweeted this the day before, remember:

Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can’t even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8.

Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market.

This is what leadership looks like ⬇️ https://t.co/TcdR63anBt

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019

YouGov conducted an online poll yesterday inspired by the gun debate (or rather, non-debate) in New Zealand. How are Americans feeling nowadays about “military-style” semiautomatics, whatever that means? Result:

A two-thirds majority of Democrats “strongly support” a total ban and a three-quarters majority at least somewhat support it. If you don’t like that poll because it’s an online survey and because Ocasio-Cortez isn’t limiting her designs on semiautomatics to the “military-style” variety, here’s a scientific poll that YouGov conducted last year (which I blogged at the time). The question: “Do you favor or oppose banning semiautomatic weapons?” Not “rifles,” please note. Not “AR-15s.” All semiautomatic weapons.

Eighty-two percent of Democrats backed the idea. Asked about banning all guns except those issued to law enforcement, Dems split 44/46. Asked whether the Second Amendment should be repealed outright, they were basically even on that too at 39/41. The major caveat to those numbers is that the poll was conducted two weeks after the Parkland massacre; in a moment of grief and fear the public is inevitably more receptive to major infringements on the rights of the law-abiding, as New Zealand’s prime minister well understands. Dems are probably a *little* cooler to the idea of banning all semiautomatics than they were a year ago — but when you’re at 82 percent on something, even a “little” cooler might mean two-thirds support or better. And since AOC is to the left of the average Democrat on virtually everything, it’s a cinch that she means what she says about banning all “semiautos.” Whether she can define what a “semiauto” is or not.

Here’s Beto O’Rourke on the trail a few days ago being asked about AR-15s. He’s being mocked for his response, which somehow manages to annoy both sides of the gun debate: Yes, he insists, sales of new AR-15s should be banned, but no, we shouldn’t confiscate AR-15s that are already in circulation. The left doesn’t like that last part, which makes it a “bad answer” by the standards of primary pandering, but he’s obviously right that *if* a ban on a broad class of weapons were to be imposed, this is what it would look like. Don’t antagonize gun owners by trying to take their weapons away. Focus instead on limiting the flow of new weapons.

Beto O'Rourke: "If you own an AR-15, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly and safely. I just don't think that we need to sell anymore weapons of war into this public." pic.twitter.com/uqMA1jWOTf

— The Hill (@thehill) March 17, 2019