He may be a long shot in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, but the California representative Eric Swalwell is trying to stand out with a focus on gun violence, including his proposal to spend $15bn on an Australia-style federal ban and buyback of military-style “assault weapons”.
Swalwell, a 38-year-old Democratic congressman who represents a district in the progressive Bay Area, launched his campaign on Tuesday with a town hall near Parkland, Florida. He spoke alongside two prominent Parkland activists: 18-year-old Cameron Kasky and Fred Guttenberg, a parent who lost his daughter Jaime in last year’s school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.
“Hope died in Parkland over a year ago. But in a uniquely American way, through the strength and courage of our children, hope was born here, too,” Swalwell told a small Florida crowd on Tuesday evening. “You inspired a nation. You inspired lawmakers who were demoralized and had given up.”
He said he did not agree with the National Rifle Association’s argument that gun control was a “culturally divisive” issue.
“I think we can have a country where you can keep your pistols, keep your rifles, keep your shotguns, but we’re able to unite and take the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous people,” he said to applause.
Swalwell joins a primary field of nearly 30 other Democratic candidates, some of whom have decades more experience in politics. Before he was elected to Congress in 2012, Swalwell had previously served on the city council in Dublin, California.
Swalwell’s most distinctive policy proposal is his suggestion, first proposed in an op-ed last year, that the United States not only ban assault weapons, as Congress did in 1994, but institute a mandatory buyback of an estimated 15m of the weapons and prosecute Americans who refuse to give up their guns.
“Australia did it,” Swalwell said at the town hall. “New Zealand, a couple weeks ago.”
Swalwell’s pledge to make gun violence prevention one of his top presidential campaign issues has attracted the attention of gun control activists, including some Parkland families.
“I really appreciate the fight that he brings to this issue,” Fred Guttenberg, who has become a fierce advocate for tougher gun control laws since his 14-year-old daughter was shot to death with a military-style rifle in her suburban school, told the Guardian in advance of the town hall on Tuesday.
“When it comes to, for example, taking on the gun lobby, there’s no one I can think of who does more, at least in putting himself out there, than him.”
Guttenberg, who said he has not yet endorsed any of the 2020 candidates, said that Swalwell had also been personally supportive.
“He’s a young dad, you know? He understands,” Guttenberg said. “I talk about my kids, and he sees his kids. He’s never lost sight of that connection.”
Swalwell’s proposal to spend billions on a mandatory buyback of military-style rifles has prompted backlash and mockery from gun rights activists, including the NRA, which dubbed him “gas bag in the House” on the cover of an NRA magazine earlier this year.
Conservative American news outlets gave prominent coverage to Swalwell’s Twitter exchange in November with a former contributor to Infowars, the conspiracy website, who tweeted that Swalwell’s mandatory buyback plan would result in a “a war” and that Americans would not consent to the government buying back their guns.
“It would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes,” Swalwell tweeted back.
“So our government would nuke its own country in order to take guns? Wow,” the Infowars contributor responded.