beto kent state weapons of war
Courtesy Twitter

Poor Robert Francis O’Rourke. He can’t seem to win for losing lately. Despite the brief, but intense media flurry he generated by confidently proclaiming, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” all he did was sink further in the polls.

It seems that, as Eric Swalwell so clearly demonstrated, promising to confiscate Americans’ lawfully-owned firearms isn’t really a path to electoral success.

From washingtonexaminer.com:

“I want to be really clear that that’s exactly what we are going to do,” O’Rourke said. “Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government. We’re not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities, to be used against us in our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our Walmarts, our public places.”

Still, “Beto” is a one-note singer on the campaign trail these days. And this week, he took his tune to Kent State University.

Somehow, though, he missed the inherent irony that venue presented for his civilian disarmament message.

Maybe Beto was too blotto when the history of Kent State was taught while he was in school.

Kent State Shooting
In a May 4, 1970 file photo, a group of youths cluster around a wounded person as Ohio National Guardsmen, wearing gas masks, hold their weapons in the background, on Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio. Members of the Guards killed four students and injured nine during a campus protest against the Vietnam War. (AP Photo/Douglas Moore, File)

It must have escaped Robert Francis that Kent State is where where four unarmed Vietnam War protesters were killed and nine more wounded when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on them almost 50 years ago. That is the venue O’Rourke chose to argue that Americans need to be disarmed and only the government should have “weapons of war.”

While the candidate is certainly old enough to know better, those cheering skulls full of mush around him in the video above should probably be excused. It’s difficult to fit in learning the history of their own university between required classes like The Problematic Gender Politics of Colonial American Cuisine and Intersectional Social Justice Feminist Theory in Pygmy Cultures.

Anyway, Beto’s Kent State blunder — along with stating loudly and clearly how fervently Democrats really do want to take Americans’ guns — will go down as one of the great self-owns of the 2020 campaign.

Bravo, Beto.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

88 COMMENTS

  1. Beta is just plain stupid, and possibly a patsy. Could be a number of reasons. Worse then Salwell. See, I kinda liked Salwell’s plan. A nuclear civil war would leave us with cities filled with tons of radio active feral goul liberals, and the countryside loaded with giant delicious radioactive insects.

    • *sigh* Thank you for that. I’d almost been able to put down fallout for a while, and then I read stuff like this and I have to go back to the wasteland.

  3. He is serving a useful purpose by diluting the dem support and distracting folks from real discussions…We should seriously keep all the second and third tier clowns around as long as we can.

  4. So he went to a place where a bunch of communist insurgents were put down by lawful government force and declared it a tragedy? Really?

    • I’m as anti-communist as anybody, but “protestor” does not equal “insurgent.” Not to mention, several of the people killed and wounded at Kent State were not protesting, but simply walking in the area or observing from a distance. Kent State WAS a tragedy, and Beto’s stupid mistake is to try to hold it up as a reason to disarm citizens instead of a reason to keep a careful watch and a short leash on our own government.

      • When you’re “protesting” in favor of a genocidal communist dictatorship and providing cover for actual terrorists? Yes, it equals insurgent. Quite frankly, the dumbest thing the US government ever did was not come down on the “anti-war” (aka pro-commie) left like a ton of bricks.

        • By your logic, anyone exercising their first amendment rights – and anyone who happens to be in the vicinity – are fair game for the National Guard to gun down at will. A strange world view, my friend. Very strange.

        • The first amendment is not a permit for sedition and insurgency. The reality is that 50 years later, the results of the pro-commie left’s treason are self-evident. The blood of every person who died at the hands of the communists who took over Vietnam is on their hands. Nobody likes to talk about what happened after the US withdrew from Vietnam and left the region open to the terrors of Communism. However, the butchery of Pol Pot and his vietnamese counterparts can be laid squarely at the feet of “protestors” who supported genocidal communists at the expense of the innocent people their government was protecting.

        • There is a distinct possibility of your head exploding from extreme cognitive dissonance in the coming decades, when China invades Vietnam and the U.S. + allies come to Vietnam’s defense. It may not be as great a Marxist hellscape as, say, North Korea, but it’s still a murderous Stalinist authoritarian regime.

        • @pwr… it’s kind of like you changed the subject to international affairs and away from Kent State. I agree, abandoning Vietnam was a terrible mistake… but so was fighting that war without a coherent strategy beyond “body count” in the first place (and I’m one who believes we were right to oppose the spread of international communism in Vietnam and Korea both).

          As for Kent State, you use scary labels like “sedition” and “insurgency,” but what you are actually referring to is a large group of hotheaded college students, some of whom threw rocks, some of whom were just watching, and some of whom were simply walking in the area. An insurgency this was not. Rather, the national guard, a trained military force, opened fire on an untrained, disorganized mass of people at distance, with no clear idea of who or what they were engaging. Some of the protesters are clearly unsympathetic, and undoubtedly deserved arrest. A few might, indeed, have required force to control. But shooting indiscriminately into a group that includes non-protesters and passersby, at distance, is both ineffective and inappropriate (not to mention immoral). Using scare words doesn’t change that, sorry.

        • Every single person in that mob had the blood of millions on their hands. Actions have consequences. You join a treasonous mob, you are the only one responsible when that mob gets put down.

        • “The first amendment is not a permit for sedition and insurgency.”

          And when a Leftist administration declares speech on the 2A by us to be treason, they have carte blanch to imprison us?

        • pwrserge-You are what the Second Amendment is meant to be used on in defense of Liberty.

          During viet nam the U.S government and any one who supported it where the only threats to the Constitution. You older cowards put the coup de grace in the Constitutional Republic and decayed our Republic into a two party democracy, with your subservience to a corrupt government. The greatest tragedy of Vietnam was how material driven cowards made honor into something that was government issued, which is spitting in the face of the Founders and the ideal of individual Liberty.

          Why was vietnamese communism so bad but chines communism was good enough to send our manufacturing base to.

          Older folks like you are the real threats to Liberty and it is disgusting how indoctrinated you still are when the world’s knowledge is at your finger tips.

        • Saying “commie” extra loud with impotent rage spittle flying off your lips isn’t really a much better argument than your earlier attempts. Also, you haven’t addressed the fact that several of the killed and wounded at Kent State were not communists and not part of any mob, commie, libtardian, or otherwise. Any defense of the national guard at Kent State, which seems to be what you are trying and failing to accomplish, really does need to address those circumstances. Or maybe you’re a, “break some eggs to make an omelet,” kind of guy? I get it: certain people don’t matter because they got infected with commie cooties from being on a college campus…

        • Okay, well obviously you are either trolling, or completely unhinged. “Collateral damage?” This is how a sociopath thinks. And you aren’t even funny, like Vlad. I’m out.

        • Or I just have a much more personal experience with the consequences of commies being allowed to run around without consequences. Ask the children of a holocaust victim how they feel about the government protecting Nazi rallies.

      • pwrserge is every bit as much the tyrant wanna-be as the worst of the Dems. He’s fine with government suppression of fundamental rights, as long as the gov is suppressing those he disagrees with. The hypocrisy of expressing these views on a pro 2A forum is apparently lost on him.

        • So long as it’s suppressing commies. Yes. Somebody who considers suppressing commies “tyranny” needs to go take a guided tour of the mass graves they are responsible for. No, liberty does not require one to suffer a commie to live.

    • Not every student on the Kent State campus was protesting and throwing rocks and tear gas at the National Guardsmen. Three of the four killed and four of the nine wounded were more than 100 yards away. I suspect that at least some of them had no involvement with the protesters and were just heading to their next class.

      This was a first class fuckup by poorly trained and led troops who panicked. A bunch of grunts, back from ‘Nam, would have kept their heads. At the very least, the leaders, including officers not even on the scene, should have faced courts martial. They were very lucky that a vengeful relative didn’t figure out who they were and put them down one by one.

      • Four were killed at Kent State, and nine others were shot. Two of the dead, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, were simply walking from one class to another. They were not involved in the protest.

        Interestingly, Schroeder, who was killed by the National Guard, was a member of the Kent State ROTC. So you can see that it’s true — certain animals really do eat their own.

        • Incidents like Kent State perpetuate an image of the National Guard as being poorly led and trained compared to regular active duty soldiers. It’s an opinion I held as a soldier in the ’80’s and saw again when deployed during the second Gulf War.
          One incident I recall that reinforced that perception happened when a few of us had to rely on an Alabama National Guard unit for transport. They gave me the impression of being a mix of teenagers and pot-bellied old men and the trip south out of Baghdad didn’t help. Along the way at least one of the unarmored Hummers broke down on the freeway and a goofy junior soldier half my age who asked me whether or not I was “qualified” with the AK I was carrying.

    • pwrserge is the kind of ‘anti-communist’ that makes communists look good. He’ll put you in a concentration camp just as fast as they will but he’ll preach about god while he does it instead of about lenin.

      • Only if you’re a godless commie. They could use some more Jesus in their lives.

        FYI: There has never been in human history a group of “anti-communists” that did more damage than actual communists. … and yes, that includes a certain Austrian corporal.

  5. Maybe he’s full of anger over how it should have been him in Texas and it should be him at the top of the polls. His past behavior would definitely indicate he’s full of himself and feels the world owes him something. I would interpret this not as stupidity but as a threat of his not only willingness but eagerness to wield the guns of government against Americans to enforce his will. Like an incel but with elections.

  6. I’m almost starting to think that some of the lesser socialist candidates are just disposable throw-aways for the party to keep the gun confiscation message going without endangering the real candidates that actually have half a shot at getting elected.
    The want to keep pushing the narrative to keep their base fired up going into the elections. But at the same time know that doing so is pretty much suicide for any candidate. So they have these nobodies who never had a chance take the political hit, make the chosen candidate seem more mainstream, and will still get the gun grabber’s vote, because who else are they going to vote for? Trump?
    Once they are in office, they are in an easier position to quietly get those policies implemented.

    I’m sure Beto will be taken care of once he drops out. A nice cozy speaking or other do-nothing job. Appreciation for his sacrifice to advance the cause if you will.

    Or maybe this devil’s lettuce is making me read too deep into things. It’s happened.

    • If they win the next election maybe they’ll appoint him gun control czar. The shit show will be his legacy. When it comes to confiscating property he can show us how it’s done.

        • Long-term social activist sneaks like Bloomberg would rather have citizens comply with confiscation willingly. It’s easier for sheep to give away property when they’re convinced they have no need of it anymore, regardless of historical precedent or law.
          Confrontational idiots like Beat-O, Swalwell, Booker, and Kamala Harris are more vocal about using governmental authority to snatch property because their mindset is about short-term action. This is why there’s a marked push to change voter demographics and overturn the electoral process. It allows them to politically neutralize opposition and leverage authority on the non-compliant with whom they disagree so they can be punished more severely later.

  8. Why do they keep talking about buying them back? If their position that nobody should have them is so righteous, and they have the support that they claim they do, why do they insist on buying them back? Just come and take them.

    • They should also drop the “back”. They never owned these arms in the first place. They can offer to buy them. We can respectfully decline. They would not like the result if they push the issue.

  9. This is proof that politicians neglect history Kent State was May 1970 and O’rouke was born September 1972. Another situation of a little knowledge being dangerous which seems to be an epidemic in the gun control business. They seem not to know where most murders and or gun violence occurs or committed by whom. Nor do they seem to comprehend that the 2nd is intended for the individual re September 9, 1789, in the Senatorial debates of the Bill of Rights or that most actual militia members were required to supply their own arms and ammunition which therefore means those arms should be of military quality. If they think if state governments in those days could afford to supply every with arms and accouterments they really do not understand financial matters.

    • The Deep State is too busy wasting taxpayer money purchasing arms for covert insurgent scum around the world. The “missing money” the Pentagon cannot account for is being wasted on black ops support at the tactical and strategic level around the world with the help of arms manufacturers and intel organizations.
      If the Deep State gave a real sh*t about real money and deficits, the law, or the US people, that “missing money” could’ve bought a whole arsenal of guns and ammo for Americans instead.
      “They” would rather piss it away supporting questionable allies who knocked our NY buildings to the ground and fattening quislings at home who would be better served decorating or fertilizing an elm tree.

      • You could have included Obamas 350 billion “shovel ready stimulus package” that was overseen by Creepy Uncle Joe and of which there has never been a full accounting..

  12. Safely stored, lawfully owned firearms = “Guns on the streets”
    I’m tired of this lie being perpetuated unabated by leftist blackshirts.
    Insinuating that criminals can come and go in our homes and take guns as they please like we have guns laying out on the kitchen table for anyone to take.

  13. Especially liked it when he pointed out 4 dead students but failed to “remember” that they were unarmed and they were killed by the NATIONAL GUARD…

  14. BeatOff Boy O’Dourke just argued the reason the founders penned the 2 amendment,because of would be petty tyrants just such as BeatOff.

  15. It’s a shame that today’s students are either that stupid or clueless of the implications. I can’t help but think that Beto continues his anti-gun crusade at the behest of the other candidates. They want him to get the public warmed up to the idea of confiscation without them having to say it for fear of losing standing in the polls.

  17. Beto Betyoo Betoe whatever.
    Get lost already. No one wants or needs to hear your waste of oxygen tales.
    Just go away already.
    You have less chance of being elected town dog catcher then to run for National office. Go away already.

  18. It is important to be specific about what Beto is forgetting here.

    1. As all here understand, Kent State is a symbol of of extreme violence by government using military force against non-violent and unarmed citizens.

    2. Take notice of the distances. The closet victim of these murders was 71 feet from his killers. Most of the victims were hundreds of feet away, as far as 750 feet. None of them could have posed any level of threat to their killers.

    3. Not all were protestors. The killers shot students simply walking across the campus. One of the murdered students was in ROTC at Kent State.

    4. All the murdered students and the wounded were students in good academic standing at Kent State.

    Beto’s disconnect from what happened there and who did what to who is just unbelievable. What a moron.

    ————————————–

    Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):

    Jeffrey Glenn Miller; age 20; 265 ft (81 m) shot through the mouth; killed instantly

    Allison B. Krause; age 19; 343 ft (105 m) fatal left chest wound; died later that day

    William Knox Schroeder; age 19; 382 ft (116 m) fatal chest wound; died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery. He was in ROTC at Kent State.

    Sandra Lee Scheuer; age 20; 390 ft (120 m) fatal neck wound; died a few minutes later from loss of blood

    Wounded (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
    Joseph Lewis, Jr.; 71 ft (22 m); hit twice in the right abdomen and left lower leg

    John R. Cleary; 110 ft (34 m); upper left chest wound

    Thomas Mark Grace; 225 ft (69 m); struck in left ankle

    Alan Michael Canfora; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his right wrist

    Dean R. Kahler; 300 ft (91 m); back wound fracturing the vertebrae, permanently paralyzed from the chest down

    Douglas Alan Wrentmore; 329 ft (100 m); hit in his right knee

    James Dennis Russell; 375 ft (114 m); hit in his right thigh from a bullet and in the right forehead by birdshot, both wounds minor

    Robert Follis Stamps; 495 ft (151 m); hit in his right buttock

    Donald Scott MacKenzie; 750 ft (230 m); neck wound

    • one of my kids teaches there…in visiting the place one gets the distinct impression that they wish it all would just go away and not be reminded…little more than a small memorial stone to mark the spot where it occurred

      • If they’re willing to wager credibility, livelyhoods, and existence on their beliefs the eventual proceeds resulting their defeat should be pledged to survivors or a charitable cause. If the politicians want to provoke a zero sum game with their “reasonable laws” they need to realize the consequences if they lose.

  20. If it is NOY confiscation but rather a sale to the govt, and I be the seller, I get to pick the price ! 10 MILLION bucks sir. PER AR.

  22. Golly when the Kent State massacre happened I was a 16 year old justifiably concerned I’d get drafted and end up in Vietnam. It galvanized opinion against that idiotic asian adventure as much as Tet. And now we’ve spent 18years in Afghanistan…only now our boy’s and girl’s all volunteer for Bush’s BS. Beta is retarded. Thanks Beta😄

    • Actually, we spent three months helping the Northern Alliance drive out the Taliban. The rest of the time has been spent throwing away that victory starting with the second Bush’s decision to run off to Iraq.

      • Agree completely. We did a terrific job of punishing the animals that attacked us on 9/11, and those who gave them a place to hide. Then Bush The Lesser screwed it up. Seized defeat from the jaws of victory.

        Then went on a personal adventure in Iraq. Took a good and honorable cause and twisted it into something stupid, unwinnable and unwanted by anyone with the least sense.

        Idiot.

      • the Taliban haven’t gone anywhere…air power drove them undercover…and unless you want to do what the Russians tried to do…which is kill everybody…there’s no real way to win this war…all we can do is choose when to admit we lost it….

  23. There’s this baked in assumption that everyone who runs for POTUS thinks they’re going to win and drops out as soon as they realize they cannot.

    This isn’t true. Some people who cannot win stay in well past the time they realize that they cannot win just to try to steer the narrative within their party (or even sometimes the another party). I think that’s what Beto is doing here.

    He wants to be that “hero” who drove the narrative within his party and “got them talking” about gun confiscation so that he can use that later in his career. That’s how many people with political aspirations work.

    Other times they just want to be a spoiler. I mean, there’s no way Perot thought for even a solitary second that he was going to win in 1992. But he knew he could punch above his weight class as a 3rd party candidate which is exactly what he did.

    • Perot got Clinton elected. What he should have done was run as a Republican. That way, he would have pushed the party in his direction without draining away votes the Republican candidate needed. His candidacy was a failure, not because he didn’t win, but because his loss made it possible to dismiss the issues he raised.

      • Success and failure depend on how you define them and, in all cases, may or may not occur.

        Perot successfully kept certain issues near and dear to himself being talked about long after the GOP primary was over and did that by staying in the race as a third party candidate. If that was his goal then he was successful. If his goal was to try to influence the election in a manner that the OUTCOME was more to his liking then he failed.

        Regardless, he took 18.91% of the vote in that election and his run is still studied and dissected today. It could even be argued that he changed modern American politics by doing this. He certainly accomplished something rather large. If it’s a win or not depends on your point of view.

  24. But wait! The Ohio National Guard was armed with rifles that did not have detachable magazines and only held eight rounds. These are politically acceptable (for now.) Besides they were in the hands of the military. One of the anointed. (I’m a vet, so I can say that.) Not black. No plastic. Of course, if those guys had butt stroked those students, instead of shooting them, the results would have been much the same. After all, they were armed with real rifles.

    • shotguns would have been a better choice…but they went with what they had…in many ways this was the townies vs the college kids….there was some tension there…

  25. “Of course only the government should have guns”.
    Just ask the indians, the feather. Or the indians, the red dot. In both examples only the government had guns when unarmed civilians were shot to death by soldiers.

    The 2A is about responsible ownership of flamethrowers, tanks, fighter planes, guided missiles, armed watercraft, or whatever a law abiding citizen can afford to buy.

    If you don’t have the same firepower that the government has you will be made a slave. Or killed if you don’t do as you are told.

    • Chtis, not really. Only men with small arms (infantry) can occupy ground. Tank crews have to dismount for any number of reasons. Engage a whole platoon of M-1 Abrams? No. Pick off a couple of crew members taking a piss and run like hell? Eighteen years later they may loose the taste for fighting against their fellow citizens. I don’t advocate this. In fact I find it distasteful. But if it comes to defending the constitution. Took that oath twice. Meant it both times.

      • when it comes to the Abrams you just let them go by and pick-off the fuel trucks…this thing is a real gas hog!….you’ll find a lot of them over in Lima…a plant I toured…where they go to get refurbished….

  26. This isn’t funny anymore…. When will Americans TRULY wake up to the tyranny hovering over their heads….
    Think about what these people stand for, then look at what the future would hold of these people succeeded in their disarmament of this country….

    HASHTAG: THIS SH!T ISN’T FUNNY ANYMORE!!!!

  28. How the hell did the university even allow this malignment of facts and capitalization of the murder of 4 unarmed people on their campus BY OUR GOVERNMENT? Putting aside that the murders were performed with M1 rifles that may or may not be considered “assault weapons” by the intentionally flexible definition of that phrase, along with pistols and shotguns. This is what the faculty allows? Stepping on the legacy of 4 dead kids and maligning history to argue that you should give your guns to the government, that way you’ll all be safe?
    Spoiler alert, kiddos: Until you’re not. Beto’s politics may be ignorant but his actions here are disgusting, and shame on any staff member of Kent State who doesn’t condemn this.

    • How does the malignment, as you put it, happen? The college allows it.
      As a matter of fact there are colleges that have ROTC programs despite a disapproving student body and faculty. I sent two of my boys to Norwich U. in Vermont as cadets. Two of their fellow high school classmates ended up in state college ROTC programs at Kent State, OH, and Rutgers, NJ, respectively.
      How the kids perceive themselves in two different social environments is striking.

Comments are closed.