There’s a popular meme circulating online that relates the evolution of cultural devolutionary talking points. It goes like this:
Stage 1: “You’re crazy; it’s not happening.”
Stage 2: “Okay, it’s happening, but it’s exaggerated.”
Stage 3: “It’s happening…and it’s actually a good thing.”
Stage 4: “And if you disagree, you’re a bigot.”
We see this pattern repeated with many issues, Second Amendment rights included. In fact, say some, we’re already at Stage 3 with respect to firearm seizure. As one commentator puts it, leftists have moved on from “nobody’s coming for your guns.”
It’s not as if, though, the writing wasn’t already on the wall years ago. Just consider what late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said about modern sporting rifles (misrepresented as “assault weapons”) back in 1995. On an episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes, she confessed:
If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in” — I would have done it.
Of course, if you’d confiscate all sporting rifles — which are just semiautomatic weapons — why not all semiautomatic firearms, period? They all can be fired just as rapidly.
More ambitious still is New York City’s current mayor, Zohran Mamdani. In 2022, he went the full gun-seizure Monty, proclaiming:
And today, Democrats around the country are putting the hammer down on gun control to move closer to this goal.
Your Grandfather’s Gun Control
The aforementioned commentator, D. Parker, writes today that it’s “bad enough when leftists lie. It’s worse when they openly tell the truth.” He points out that ,previously, left-wingers had been satisfied to incrementally strip away Second Amendment rights. This is why, mind you, we have approximately 20,000 federal, state, and local gun-control laws on the books. Of course, true safety always lies just around the corner — with the next set of anti-gun laws.
Parker also states that firearm-seizure warnings could for a long time be dismissed with the “You’re crazy; it’s not happening” line. But now history tells the tale. There have already been confiscations in the U.K., Australia, and Canada. And regardless of what happens with Las Vegas, in our small world, what happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe. (Why, Marxism didn’t stay there, did it? See Mamdani, et al.)
Parker further opines that, unlike in the past, leftists aren’t even waiting for a high-profile mass shooting before pushing new Second Amendment restrictions. It’s no wonder, either. Our national murder rate is the lowest it has been since perhaps 1900 (hard to believe, but true). What gun grabbers are proposing are doozies, too. As Parker writes:
Consider this sampling of anti-liberty legislation, starting with Colorado, where they want to impose even barrel controls. Redefining what a gun is will make it that much more difficult for innocent citizens to defend themselves.
Then we have the former free state of Virginia, where the ghouls have offered a great big bear hug to any piece of anti-liberty legislation that’s popped into their authoritarian heads. The worst is an expanded “assault firearm” ban designed to disarm most Virginians if it survives any kind of Supreme Court scrutiny.
These egregious examples pale in comparison to those of Rhode Island Democrats. This piece of anti-liberty legislation crosses the gun confiscation Rubicon. Yes, the same people who promised last year that they weren’t “coming for anyone’s guns” have “an 18-bill slate that is a greatest-hits album of every Democrat’s wish list….”
Read It and Weep
The website The Truth About Guns (TTAG) relates this slate’s details, writing that it includes:
- A direct assault on the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) via a “public nuisance” liability scheme — the same unconstitutional trick anti-gunners have been trying to run in half a dozen states, designed to bankrupt the industry through death-by-lawsuit.
- Gun rationing (because apparently the Second Amendment comes with a monthly quota).
- Background checks on ammunition.
- Mandatory training requirements.
- Mandatory liability insurance to exercise a constitutional right. Try to imagine them requiring this for voting or speech.
- And the headline grabber: outright possession bans on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles.
Note that this legislation adds the word “possession” to an existing 2025 “assault weapons” ban. (This takes effect July 1, 2026.) This would turn current legal owners into felons after a deadline (proposed as December 31, 2026). That is, unless they sell, transfer, or destroy their firearms.
Adding perspective, TTAG emphasizes that a
possession ban isn’t a regulation on commerce. It’s the confiscation of lawfully owned property, full stop.
You followed every law when you bought your rifle. You passed the background check. You filled out the 4473. You did everything they told you to do. And now Rhode Island wants to turn you into a felon for owning the same gun they approved you to buy.
Note, too, that included among firearms whose possession would be prohibited are:
- Semiautomatic shotguns with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding six rounds.
- Any shotgun with a revolving cylinder.
- Semiautomatic rifles with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds.
It gets worse, too. As the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) points out:
There is no grandfathering, and the legislation creates a felony with harsh penalties. Those who fail to get rid of their guns face a maximum penalty of $10,000 and a 10-year prison sentence.
… [The legislation] forces anyone who owns firearms to maintain an insurance policy of at least $1,000,000. This is all part of their scheme to make exercising your constitutional rights completely unaffordable.
So, as critics may say, all the above make something crystal clear. Zohran Mamdani may be one of the few Democrats who’ll explicitly say, “We need to ban all guns.” But he’s not even close to being the only one who believes that.
