On the heels of the first Democratic Debate, we’ve seen one of the larger and higher profile pushes for gun control in the last decade. Led by Mrs. Clinton, most prominent Democrat hopefuls have fallen in line, suggesting all the same gun control programs that would have almost no effect on shootings in this country.

But this time there’s an added twist, and it comes from down under. Hillary and many others are actively advocating for an Australian style gun “buyback” program. Much digital ink has been spilled pointing out that this is at best unconstitutional, but I’d like to focus on the word “buyback” and why it should be expelled from the vocabulary of any right thinking advocate of the right to self-defense.

Don’t give confiscators cover

Buyback is a euphemism and softens the violent reality of what an Australian plan would look like in America. Don’t let anyone fool you; Australia’s “buyback” was a mandatory confiscation. In America that would mean if you don’t comply, men with guns will come to your home and force you to surrender your property. As Charles Cooke of National Review points out, this wouldn’t go well.

You’re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants — and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won’t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item — let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it’s slightly odd that you think that we can’t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that’s just the price we have to pay.

When we say buyback, it allows politicians weasel around the reality that confiscation must be backed with the threat of violence and jail time. Mass confiscation would require an unprecedented police and military build up focused exclusively on going door-to-door, seizing firearms and then arresting or possibly killing anyone who doesn’t submit.

If you thought the War on Drugs was bad, just imagine how much worse a “War on Guns” would be. Don’t give confiscators a pass; demand they confront the ugly truth of what confiscation would look like.

“Buyback” implies rights weren’t ours to begin with

Americans, more than nearly any other people, have a fundamentally different understanding of our government. The Framers of our Constitution realized and declared that the powers of the government exist only through the consent of the governed. Your Natural Rights — to life liberty, and property — are not given to you by government.

The word buyback implies the government gave us this right in the first place. It implies that we are giving back to government something they never should have given us in the first place. You wouldn’t “give back” your freedom of speech or press or religion.

That frame of mind is an anathema to any individual who understands the principles of a constitutionally limited republic.

When we use “buyback”, we subtly change our relationship to government. Instead, we should recognize government’s subservience to the governed, that the state is a creature of our own creation — our servant, not our master.

So what should we say?

Anyways, that got intense there. I’ll take off my George Washington costume now and get back to the point.

As Americans, we need to be honest with ourselves and understand exactly what these policies would require and how they would change the place of the state in our lives. Using words that soften reality robs us of fully understanding the complexity of this debate.

Or gun could just say screw it and go for broke.