Gun confiscation on the table as Booker, Swalwell lead 2020 Democrats leftward

Democratic presidential candidates are headed sharply left on gun control as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Rep. Eric Swalwell sought Monday to one-up each other with calls for the government to confiscate firearms.

Booker pledged to take executive action on his first day in office “closing dangerous loopholes in gun sales, cracking down on unscrupulous dealers and gun manufacturers, and investing in communities impacted by gun violence.”

Booker also went far beyond many of the other candidates’ gun control stances in his plan with a call for federal licenses for gun owners. His campaign called the plan the “most sweeping gun violence prevention plan ever put forth by a presidential candidate.”

Swalwell, who has made combating gun violence a key issue in his presidential campaign, told the Washington Examiner in a statement Monday that he also supports gun licensing and suggested that his proposed policies that go further than Booker’s plan.

[ Related: Cory Booker: Americans should be ‘thrown in jail’ if they won’t give up their guns]

“I support gun licensing. You need a license to drive a car; using a gun shouldn’t have a lower standard,” Swalwell said. “I want to know if Sen. Booker’s assault weapons ban would include the 15 million on the streets now, or just future sales. My plan bans both.”

Swalwell has advocated for a ban on the “possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons” that includes an estimated $15 billion federal mandatory buyback of those guns and criminal prosecution for firearm owners who attempt to keep the weapons.

When asked in a CNN interview Monday whether he, like Swalwell, thinks people should be “thrown in jail” if people don’t give up assault weapons, Booker said that there should be a “reasonable period in which people can turn in these weapons.”

Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright told the Washington Examiner that some other candidates will come forward with some variation of Booker and Swalwell’s aggressive gun control stances, but he said that not all will. “You’re going to get some to say, ‘That’s not pragmatic, that’s not reasonable.’”

Booker and Swalwell’s one-upping suggests a distinct shift in how Democrats approach gun issues.

[ Also read: Booker on gun registration: Only ‘gun runners and criminals’ should fear the idea]

“For years it was hard wired into most Democrats’ political DNA to stay away from gun control,” Democratic strategist Jim Manley told the Washington Examiner.

What’s more, at least some Democrats are willing to ignore Congress to achieve their goals.

In a CNN town hall last month, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., brought attention to using executive authority to combat gun violence. As president, Harris said, she would give Congress 100 days to “get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws” before taking executive action, specifically, a requirement that those who sell more than five guns a year perform background checks on their customers.

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action, tweeted Monday. “This is a sea change: Presidential candidates are competing to be the best on this issue,” Watts said in a tweet Monday.

[ Related: Gun rights backers scoff at proposed change to rules at heart of Supreme Court case]

Some gun control measures are common among the candidates. Nearly all the senators seeking the Democratic presidential nomination co-sponsored the Assault Weapons Ban bill, for instance, and a plethora of candidates call for universal background checks for gun sales. But the Assault Weapons Ban allows those who currently legally possess an assault weapon to keep it, and not all of the candidates have committed to using executive authority to achieve their goals.

John Lott, president of the pro-firearms Crime Research Prevention Center, told the Washington Examiner that the key word in assault-style weapons bans is “style.”

“The vast majority of guns in the United States are semi-automatic guns,” Lott said. “If they want to go and ban certain semi-automatic guns based on how they look rather than how they function, it’s not really obvious to me why anybody thinks that they’re going to have any particular impact on crime rates.”

Lott also argued that barriers to gun ownership such as licenses disproportionately harm individuals in minority and low-income communities, populations most likely to be victims of violent crime, who may be seeking to own guns for self-defense.