According to Firearm Chronicles
We’re forty days away from Election Day, and on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, we’re zeroing in on a House race in Illinois that features one of the more outspoken, if not well-informed, gun control advocates in Congress.
I don’t know if Illinois Congressman Sean Casten has missed the news, but Americans have been purchasing firearms in record numbers for months now, and there are millions of Americans who’ve become new gun owners since the start of 2020. Demand for firearms is higher than it’s ever been at the moment, but the first-term Democrat says there are “too many guns,” and he’s pushing an Australia-style compensated confiscation to remove guns from the hands of legal gun owners.
Casten made the comments in an interview with the editorial board of the Daily Herald newspaper in Illinois, though the paper itself had to correct some of Casten’s erroneous assertions in its news report.
Casten, who has touted the success of gun buyback programs before, suggested the U.S. follow Australia’s lead.
“They took a whole bunch of guns out of circulation, and they haven’t had a mass shooting since,” Casten said. “Why don’t we do that?”
There have been shootings with multiple deaths in Australia since those laws were enacted, however, including at least one last year. But none were as deadly as the 1996 attack.
Casten said Australian leaders used money as an incentive because they recognized reducing the number of privately owned guns would be “extremely difficult.”
“Would it work exactly the same way, adapted to U.S. culture? I don’t know,” Casten said. “My interest right now is less about how to do that particular policy (and more about) let’s start having the conversation.”